


The Case of 'Well It's Not Fiction Any More'- Day Two

by shadowed_sunsets



Series: The Detective and the Writer [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Casefic (kind of), Crime Solving, Epic Friendship, Gen, John as a Detective, NYPD AU, Sherlock as a Crime Novelist, typical police procedural warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 05:59:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5036500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowed_sunsets/pseuds/shadowed_sunsets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Overall Summary: Sherlock Holmes is a somewhat famous author of detective novels, well-known for his intricate plots but barely known by the press or public. John Watson is a NYPD homicide detective, known among his colleagues for catching- and solving- the peculiar cases most detectives avoid.</p>
<p>When John catches a case involving a crime scene that looks oddly familiar, he brings in Sherlock Holmes to consult. Just that one time, supposedly.</p>
<p>The NYPD precinct will never be the same.</p>
<p>Day Two Summary: The real investigating begins, and progress is slowly made. John and Sherlock find a surprising lead among Sherlock's fan-mail. They go off together to investigate, which turns out to be both a good and a horrible idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! I am so sorry this took so long, I didn't mean for it to. I hope you enjoy nonetheless!
> 
> Welcome to "Day Two"!
> 
> The first thing you, my reader, should know is that this is not the complete story. As you may be able to tell by the title, this entire story will be told by the events of each day of the case. This part is only day two of the case. (In the fashion of 24, if you're familiar with the show).
> 
> The other consecutive days will be posted as their own separate story. They are also currently in the works.
> 
> t was initially inspired by the show Castle, especially the pilot. But this is not a duplicate. There are also aspects inspired by original ACD stories.
> 
> Enormous thanks to squire who was instrumental in helping me whip this into shape and form it into something actually readable.
> 
> Any remaining mistakes are my own. Apologies.
> 
> And now on to the story... I hope you enjoy!

John was woken from a sound sleep the next morning by the insistent ring of his cell phone.

He groaned and then reluctantly forced his eyes open to focus blearily on his bedroom around him. He drew his arm out from under the warm, thick covers to rub at his eyes.

The cell phone was still ringing insistently and vibrating on the wooden surface of the table next to his bed. In an attempt to silence it, John shifted slowly towards the side of the bed and reached up to grope blindly on the table. After a few attempts he finally managed to grab his cell and lifted it above his head to try and read the screen. The words ‘Janus Publishing’ blinked at him in bright green letters.

“What on-” John wondered in a hoarse whisper. He silently debated answering for several seconds before he finally gave in and slid his finger across the screen to answer.

“Watson,” John answered formally, pressing the phone to his ear. He cleared his throat to adjust his voice.

“Detective Watson? This is Molly Hooper, we met yesterday.” A somewhat familiar female voice started speaking right after he answered. “I apologize for calling so early.”

John sat up and moved backwards so his back was against the wall. “Sorry,” John apologized in more of a mumble, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’m afraid I don’t remember exactly. Would you mind reminding me?”

A soft rush of air whispered in his ear. “Yes, sorry,” the woman- Molly- apologized, sounding much less businesslike now. “We only talked for a few minutes yesterday, in the evening. I’m Molly Hooper, Sherlock Holmes’ publisher? I was there when you picked him up from his book event.”

The memory of a woman a little younger than him, dressed up with long brown hair pulled back and a calm but authoritative voice, stirred in John’s mind. “Oh right, yes. Hello,” John greeted, quickly coming more awake. He started moving towards the edge of the bed and swung his legs over the side. “What can I do for you Ms. Hooper? Is there trouble?”

“No, no. Not at all,” Molly Hooper quickly reassured. “Sherlock called me when he got home last night to let me know you kept your word. I do really appreciate that. But,” there was a long pause, punctuated by the rustling of papers. “I think I may also be able to help you.”

John pushed off the covers before slowly standing up on his feet. “I’m all ears, Ms. Hooper.”

A soft laugh. “Molly please, detective. You’ve survived an encounter with Sherlock Holmes and came out, hopefully, mostly unscarred. After that, you’re welcome to call me Molly.”

Apparently Holmes really was infamous for his personality. “All right, Molly,” John replied warmly, walking over to his closet to take down the robe. “How can I help you? Or how do you think you can help me?”

“Well detective, Sherlock called me earlier this morning with a… request. If you can call anything from him a ‘request.’” Molly added mostly to herself, sounding like she was speaking from experience.

“Wait, earlier? Just how early did he call you about this?” John asked since it was already ridiculously early.

Molly gave an unladylike snort. “The man doesn’t sleep, I’ve learned to expect calls from him at odd hours. But luckily today he caught me just as I got into work, so it wasn’t really that early.”

Tying the robe with one hand, John cleared his throat pointedly. “Molly?”

“Right! Yes,” Molly answered with a higher pitch to her voice. Almost alarmed she’d wandered off topic. “Sherlock… requested… I send over his fan mail I’ve been saving for him. There’s not as much of it as you might imagine, but there’s still several bins worth. He said you may be interested in it, for your case.”

She made a strange sort of giggling laugh. “I can’t imagine why you would want it really. All though of course I’m not a detective, so I’m sure I wouldn’t have the first idea.” Molly continued speaking rapidly. “It’s really not the most entertaining reading, or at least the few I’ve read weren’t. They seem to range from gushing about his writing to raving insults. Yet of course his highness still finds all of them highly amusing.”

Holmes did seem the type who would. John absently wondered, shuffling down the hallway in bare feet, if ‘his highness’ was a recurring nickname of Molly’s for Holmes. He suspected it was.  
“He did mention he was no longer allowed to even see the fan mail or talk with the press or fans, without supervision. And that there had been some kind of incident in the past, I think it was.”

Molly laughed in his ear, honestly amused. “You could call it an incident, but that’s a bit of a tame word for it. I’ll just say that I learned very quickly not to let Sherlock answer his own mail. Either in writing or electronically from his website.”

As John reached his kitchen, Molly added, “You probably noticed he has a very low tolerance for idiocy. It’s nearly nonexistent. And his fans, or critics, are no exception.”  
John took down a mug from the cupboard by the sink and set it on the counter. “So you’re saying he wrote one too many scathing responses and you had to intervene?”

“To put it one way, yes,” Molly agreed, sounding much more amiable by this point.

John opened another cupboard and started searching in it for the beans. “Molly-”

A different voice came on over the phone, not Molly’s or speaking directly into the phone to him. “Molly, I need to talk to you about this book. I’m not sure-”

“Yes, just a minute, Jim!” Molly replied to the new person, sounding harried now and entirely businesslike. Then she said to John again, “Detective-”

“It’s all right,” John reassured her, finally finding the bag. “If you could just have those bins sent to the Third precinct, care of Detective John Watson.” He gave her the rest of the address slowly, so she could write it down correctly. “I appreciate your help Miss Hooper.”

“It’s no problem, anything I can do to help. Especially when it comes to managing Sherlock,” Molly responded with an actually honest promise. There was the brief sound of paper tearing. “I’ll have these boxed up and sent over right away, hopefully they’ll arrive later this morning.”

“Fantastic,” John said gratefully trying to open the bag, which didn’t seem to want to cooperate. “Thank you.”

“I’m sure we’ll talk again,” Molly told him confidently. But then before John could reply there was a click as she hung up.

Well, John thought with a hint of humor, at least someone was being helpful and cooperating. It was at least a little difficult, at first, to believe Holmes had actually been the one to offer his mail before John had even asked for it. But once they’d gotten past the misunderstandings and false starts yesterday Holmes had given him plenty to think about.

John set his cell down on the counter and considered the paper bag of beans in front of him. Did he really have time to make and drink a cup before he went in, or should he just give up and stop on his way to the precinct? Either way it seemed he would be starting the day early today.

Seconds after John decided that he probably did have time after all, or would make the time, the screen of his cell lit up and the phone started to vibrate against the counter.

With a quiet sigh John leaned sideways a little to glance at the screen. When he saw his sisters name and number a weight settled in his stomach, and John was sure his hands started to shake slightly. This always happened when he spoke with Harry, whether it was on the phone or for their rare in-person meetings. Every conversation between the two of them inevitably ended in loud, harsh arguments. Yet each time he still answered.

John closed his eyes and slowly counted to ten before even reaching for the phone. He swiped a finger across the screen to answer and raised the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

“Brother dear, how are you?” Harry’s voice answered, sounding less sweeter and condescending than normally. “I thought I’d call you seeing as it’s been, what, months since we talked last?”

“At least,” John agreed. He picked up the paper bag and started making coffee. Then he continued, “Why are you calling me, Harry? As long as it’s been since we spoke, I can’t think of any reason for you to suddenly ring me out of the blue.”

Harry’s voice changed to take on a sharper edge. “Why do you have to be so suspicious, John? I only called so we can catch up, talk a little. Can’t you take even a few minutes out of your busy day to talk with your sister?”

John’s fingers slid off the button on the grinder, making the appliance stop. “Harry,” he said slowly, patiently. “I’m a homicide officer, I investigate murders, which you may imagine is actually quite important. And,” John cleared his throat as he readjusted the cover on the grinder, “I’m working on a case right now, so I can’t talk for very long. I’m on my way to the precinct.”

Harry snorted indecently in his ear. “Right, course you are. But not without your morning coffee first. Well, while I have the privilege of your attention, I need to talk to you about Clara.”

Of course, he should have known. John pressed down hard on the button for the grinder to give himself more time and so he wouldn’t just snap at Harry. It also helped to possibly drown out anything Harry might try to say in the meantime.

When John decided the beans were likely more than sufficiently ground, he turned off the machine and removed the cover. John finally responded, “What exactly do you want to discuss about Clara?”

A rattling sound preceded Harry’s concerned sounding question. “Are you all right? You sound a little… strange, Johnny.”

“I’m fine Harry, I’m just in a bit of a rush,” John reassured her before she started in with the strange ways she showed she cared. “What about Clara?”

“I have a very strong suspicion, more than a suspicion really, that you talked to her recently. Maybe even last night?” Harry hummed mockingly at him. “Because that would explain why she’s called or texted me nearly thirty times since then. Which is a hell of a lot more than I heard from her all last month.” Her voice changed again to become soft and icy. “Would you happen to know anything about that at all?”

John repositioned the phone to hold it in place between his ear and shoulder, freeing up his other hand to work the coffee press. “I work with Clara every day, Harry. I’m sure I talked with her last night at least once. But that doesn’t mean I talked to her about you.”

“Bet you did,” Harry muttered irritably and not very quietly. “Are you the one who told her to text and call me so much? Did you really think that would work to change my mind?”

John found himself very violently closing and resealing the bag. Then he put it back up in the cupboard and replied as calmly as he could, “I didn’t convince her about anything, Harry. Or tell her to call and text you so many times.”

“Right.”

John continued talking over her. “I only told her she should keep trying to get a hold of you. And maybe one time you would actually answer.” He paused then added a touch more reluctantly, “And I also told Clara I’d try to talk to you, and attempt to mediate so maybe the two of you can finally work out whatever is going on.”

“Of course you did, I should have expected that,” Harry commented darkly. “Why shouldn’t you get involved in this as well? Ever since you showed up in this country you’ve had to stick your nose in every part of my life.” Her voice had quickly started to rise halfway through her rant and only continued to become even louder. “You even see Clara more than I do. You work with her every single day.”

John suddenly noticed he was gripping the edge of the counter very tightly. He slowly peeled his fingers away one by one before glancing at the clock on the wall. It looked like he was going to be late after all.

“Harry, I have to get going. I’ll be late for work if I don’t hurry And it’s generally a good idea to be on time for work.”

“Right,” Harry commented sharply, just before heaving a dramatic sigh. “We’re not finished talking about your constant need to meddle in my life, Johnny. But fine, I’ll let you get back to your important life.”

“Harry-”

“Oh, and tell Clara she didn’t need to get you involved. I’ll answer her texts and calls when I feel like it,” Harry responded shortly then hung up.

John took the phone away and glared at it for several seconds. Then he set it down on the counter with a careful manner he did not feel.

After several choice words John made the effort to raise his head and push away from the counter. When he was mostly successful John straightened his back, checked the coffee, and then went to his room to change for work.

Then John left to start another day of police work.

~~

Molly was currently in the middle of working on a manuscript sent in by an up and coming want to be novelist who, as far as she could tell, had an excellent mind for creative plots but an awfully blind eye for proper procedure. It was a good story, generally speaking, but obviously needed multiple revisions.

She wasn’t looking forward to calling the client back at all, so Molly felt relieved when her cell started buzzing from where she’d left it on top of one stack of papers.

Molly set the pages she’d been reading on top of the rest of the manuscript. Then she picked up her cell and the growing excitement she’d felt immediately vanished as she read the alert on the screen. She had a new text from ‘S Holmes.’

With a deep sigh Molly propped her chin on her hand and swiped a finger across the screen. The text promptly appeared in a new window. It consisted of only one line and, true to form, was actually a question.

‘Did you send my mail on to the detective?’

When Molly had first started working with Sherlock her response to the near constant flurry of incoming texts had been to try calling him back. But Molly had quickly learned Sherlock refused to answer or acknowledge these calls. No matter how many times she called, Sherlock would let it ring out and go to voicemail. Yet instead of letting her leave a voicemail, he would text her almost immediately asking what she wanted. It didn’t take her long to learn that Sherlock preferred, and would often only, text. He rarely ever actually called.

So Molly opened a new reply and typed out with speed that came from years of practice, ‘If you’re talking about all your fan mail that’s still taking up an entire corner of my office and mostly hasn’t even been read yet, I’m working on gathering it together to send over by courier now. And before you tell me off, I called the detective less than an hour ago and told him I was sending them.’

Molly paused, tapping her thumb on the side of the phone. Then she added, ‘anything else I can do for you? I do have real work to finish, with clients who are currently writing and working on their next novels.’

‘I am working’ was Sherlock’s response that appeared only seconds later. ‘But I will let you know.’

‘Right, thanks,’ Molly typed back quickly. Then, since she doubted she’d hear any more from him, Molly locked her phone and set it back on top of a pile of papers.

After that Molly resumed working on reading through the manuscript. She had several to get through before the day was over, so she needed the head start. Molly decided she would call Sherlock later to pester him about the book he was supposedly currently working on. She gave him a longer leash than most of her clients, Sherlock was definitely one of a kind, but that just meant it was necessary to check in on him more often. He’d been ‘working’ on this new novel for months now.

~~

Once he arrived at the precinct John walked to their floor and began taking off his jacket before he noticed Greg standing next to his, Clara, and Sally’s cluster of desks. John quickly picked up his pace heading directly for the group.

Greg, Chief Lestrade, was standing at the end of the desks in sight of the rest of the room. His arms were crossed and his feet widely placed apart, listening intently to Clara as she talked rapidly and waved her hands around. John suspected Greg was humoring her, from the small smile.

Greg was an excellent chief; he worked well with people and got along with them, and was genuinely interested in every case. But he could also be incredibly stubborn when the mood took him. Especially if he thought his people were at risk or in trouble. He was a good person.

“John, good morning,” Greg greeted warmly, unfolding his arms. “It’s good to see you this very early morning.”

John flashed a smile around at them as he stopped next to Greg. “Morning,” John greeted then paused to rub his eyes a little. “How is everyone?”

“Morning, boss,” Clara replied warmly, a note of amusement in her voice. “I think we’re all a little more awake than you. At the moment.”

“I’m awake, I am absolutely awake,” John affirmed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Have we found out anything new?”

Greg cleared his throat pointedly. “Actually, John, first I need to talk with you first.” He nodded his chin in the direction of his office. “In there, alone.”

That didn’t bode well. “Right, sure,” John agreed willingly, hiding his concern. 

He turned towards Clara and Sally, and Sally specifically since she was holding a promising folder. “I’ll be right back, we’ll do a debriefing then.”

“Yes boss,” Clara answered right before mock-saluting him. “We’ll keep working away.”

Sally nodded her agreement. “Anything we find we’ll let you know,” she said, hugging the file to her chest.

“You know they’ll take care of things, John,” Greg added in, patting John’s arm. “This won’t take long, it’s just something we need to discuss alone.”

Greg started steering John towards his office. “It’s an unusual case isn’t it? It’s not very often you come across a victim and all you find of them are their ashes at the scene.”

“Very rare, yes,” John agreed, following Greg while wondering just what the chief was trying to get at. “Actually, I’m pretty sure this has never happened before.”

Greg chuckled in amusement as he stopped to open the door of his office, but it sounded slightly forced. “That’s why we need to talk, John.” 

The two of them walked inside the office, and John went over to stand next to the desk. But instead of sitting in his worn leather chair behind the desk, Greg walked along the wall to the large single-paned window that looked out onto the main room. He pulled the window blinds shut with a sharp tug.

Only once all the blinds were closed did Greg cross the room to stand in front of John. “Listen John, since this is such an unusual case I’m sure you’re aware we need to solve and close it as quickly and quietly as possible.” Greg started, leaning against the desk. “So I want to let you know I am giving you free reign to do whatever you think necessary to close this one. I trust your judgment.”

That was a ringing endorsement from Greg, but it also gave John reason to wonder if there was pressure coming from above. Especially if Greg was so insistent on doing everything possible to close this case as fast as humanly possible. Someone didn’t want this murderer on the loose for longer than necessary. Of course Greg was constantly aware of what was going on with all of his officers and the cases they were working. It was helpful especially if something went wrong so he could step in and act as a buffer or mediator. But if he was already encouraging John to follow his instincts…

“Thanks, Greg, I appreciate that. But I’m not sure-” 

Greg waved his hand sharply to cut John off, talking over him. “There’s more. The press hasn’t gotten a hold of any information about this murder yet, thank god. But once they do we both know they’ll somehow spin it into about a serial killer or violent murderer, and stir the public into crisis. Or something equally ridiculous. That’s why we have to get ahead of them before the press even gets a hint about it.”

John crossed his arms and tried to put himself into a forward thinking mindset. “Are you planning to have a press conference first? To help control the story and the press?”

Greg’s response held a tight edge to it. “That’s currently under debate. Everyone still remembers very clearly what happened… last time.”

Without thinking first about it John replied, “You mean the horrible disaster that happened after you told the press the murderer wasn’t a serial killer but that people shouldn’t commit suicide just in case?”

Greg coughed, clearing his throat as he started to rub the back of his neck. “Yes, well… that wasn’t my best hour, no.” He raised his head to look at John again. “So you may be called on to brief the press instead, fair warning.”

John nodded agreeably. “I understand. All though I really would rather not, I’m not good with the press either. You’re the one with more experience.”

Greg lowered his hand to rest it on top of his desk. “Not the best experience. But you have more experience solving these types of unusual cases, and you have the highest closing rate. I know you’re the best detective to be on this.” He leaned closer to John, lowering his voice sincerely. “But I need to know, right now, if you don’t want this one John. Especially with the complications and the pressure involved. If you can’t, I’ll hand it off to someone else.”

“No, of course no, Greg,” John quickly responded, shaking his head. “Of course I’ll work this case. We’ve already started working on it, and we have good leads and information.” He insisted, “Let us have this case, chief. We’ll make you proud.”

A faint smile broke across Greg’s face, and he raised his hands as if in surrender. “All right, all right,” he said placating. “You don’t have to twist my arm. I just wanted you to be absolutely sure about it. This isn’t your typical murder case, John.”

“I know,” John replied understandingly, rubbing his forehead. “That’s why I want this one. I know we can solve it. Clara and Sally have already put a lot of work into it.”

“Yes, I’ve seen that,” Greg acknowledged dryly. “They waved me down nearly as soon as I came in, I was barely able to get to my office first.”

“They’re very… enthusiastic.” John offered.

Greg looked amused by John’s description of his team. “Which makes them excellent cops. They’re also both very talented at quickly summarizing information, they managed to debrief me in around a minute.” He pushed off his desk to stand up. “I was very impressed.”

“Enthusiastic and impressive,” John acknowledged fondly. Clara and Sally were amazing cops, they really were, and the best team he could have ever asked to work with when he’d decided to become a detective. He was thankful Greg could see that as well.

“Exactly, that’s why I wanted your team on this,” Greg told him confidentially. “It’s a very unusual case and we need it solved as soon as possible. Because right now we have a murderer somewhere in this city who is.... unhinged enough… to commit a murder like this. So we need to find him before he has a chance to do the same to someone else.”

“I know we have to, and we will,” John promised confidently, putting his weight behind his words. “Just let my team work.”

Greg nodded his head several times as if in agreement, but the look in his eyes hinted that his mind was elsewhere. John patiently waited for Greg to say something else, but as the seconds stretched on his patience started to run out in face of his eagerness to start back on the case.

Finally John cleared his throat and said, “Chief, if that’s all you wanted I’d like to get back to my team now. If you don’t mind…”

“Actually, there’s something else I need to talk to you about,” Greg announced, clearing away his thoughts. “The DA’s gotten word about this case, and he made it very clear he wants us to use all our available resources to solve it. That’s why,” he broke off to grimace then finished slowly, “He’s authorized the use of an outside consultant.”

“What? What kind of outside consultant?” John demanded, thrown by this sudden news. Especially since Greg had just said how much faith he had in John and his team. They also had an excellent track record working with the ME’s office and other government offices. So what other consultation would they need to bring in someone from the outside? “Greg-”

“It’s not my call, all right,” Greg quickly cut him off, running his fingers through his short hair. “The DA insisted. I told him your team was more than capable on your own, but he wants all available assets.”

“All right, fine,” John reluctantly agreed. “I understand. And I suppose it’s not entirely an awful idea.” He’d prefer to keep the details of the case within the precinct, with all other sets of eyes belonging only to other officers. Outside consultants were always a bit of a wild card. Especially on a complicated case. “Who is this consultant then, have we worked with them before?”

Greg’s mouth twisted into an almost mysterious smile, like he knew a secret John didn’t and was just waiting for him to find out. “You could say that,” he agreed slowly. Greg nodded over towards the shuttered blinds. “Go take a look, he should have arrived by now.”

John frowned at him, not finding any enlightenment in Greg’s answer. At another encouraging nod John crossed the room to stop in front of the blinds. Instead of pulling them all up together, John slid a finger under one of the panels and gently pushed it up to look out. John had an angled view of the main room, including his teams group of desks off to the left.

He cast his eye over what he could see of the room, but everything appeared completely ordinary and as usual. John recognized everyone who walked past or he could see standing around. So he couldn’t understand what Greg was trying to tell him, or who he meant by ‘outside consultant.’ Everyone outside was meant to be there-

Then, as John glanced again towards where he’d left Sally and Clara working on their case, Clara moved leaning against the front of her desk with her desk phone tucked between her ear and shoulder. She stepped away, stretching the phone line as far as it would go, to stand behind Sally’s chair and lean over her shoulder. He couldn’t tell exactly what Clara was doing, but he suspected she was taking notes from whoever was on the other end of the line.

And now that Clara had moved away and was no longer blocking John’s view, he had an unobstructed view of the rest of the room- including Sally’s desk. Which meant he could now see the newly arrived and current resident of the chair that permanently sat next to Sally’s desk.

A chair now occupied by a very familiar certain mystery novel author.

John released the blinds to turn around and gape at Greg, who was still standing by his desk. “What is he doing here? When did he even get here? He’s only a crime novelist.”

Greg looked slightly uncomfortable, making a face as he cleared his throat. “A novelist who has a very unique insight into this murder. And one who comes very highly recommended by the DA. He specifically suggested Holmes consult and work with your team on this case.”

John shifted his weight back onto his heels and crossed his arms somewhat defensively. “That was, cooperative, of you. You do realize just how unusual this is. Why would the DA suggest an outside, non-government consultant, work with us? And be so specific about who the consultant was.”

“He feels very strongly about this case, and is heavily invested it. He is insistent that it be solved right away,” Greg explained, sounding like he was repeating the DA’s words from memory. “So the DA believes Holmes will be very essential and helpful to you and your team. He also made very sure that I understood this matter isn’t under debate at all.” Greg suddenly look tired, as he did sometimes when he had to blindly follow orders from above. “Yet the DA has also assured me Holmes will give us his full cooperation and won’t cause any trouble for you and the department. In return we’ll accommodate him and give him full access.”

“I see,” John responded on a quiet sigh. He slowly uncrossed his arms and walked back over to Greg.

John thought carefully about this, considering the pros and cons of having an outside consultant- especially a novelist with no history or experience on crime scenes or solving real-life crimes- involved on their case. There would be trouble, there always was, but...

“Alright, Holmes can work with us for this case.” John agreed, feeling a weight settle on his shoulders. “But there are going to be rules that he has to follow.”

John raised his hand to point a reaffirming finger at Greg. “I’m not just letting a civilian with no background in police work tag along without any precautions. What would happen if he gets hurt? The department could be liable, especially if Holmes is apparently so close with the DA.”

John knew he had the dangerous tendency of taking anyone he interacted with for an extended period of time into his care, looking after them and feeling responsible for them. Often at his own personal expense and cost. He liked looking after people and taking care of them, and sometimes he became so carried away that he forgot to take care of himself. Or was blind to the risks of such a narrow focus.

That tendency was likely the major cause of his downfall back in London. But this was a new country, a second chance. And while taking on his sisters troubles as a project hadn’t been his best idea, especially with the tension and history between them, Sally and Clara had quickly become not only his close, trusted teammates but also his very good friends.

Holmes could work with them as a consultant given his unique viewpoint on these types of unusual cases, and John would handle it and control himself. As long as he stayed professional and kept a distance, and neither of them tried to question or change that, it would be fine. It would all be fine.

“Actually,” Greg responded cautiously, as if the words were being dragged out of him, “I had the feeling the DA and Holmes weren’t particularly close, or friendly. The DA made the request with all the typical political doublespeak, including that it was ‘for the good of the department and the public’ ridiculousness. But every time he started talking about Holmes specifically, he slipped a little and sounded more irritated and condescending. If I didn’t know better, or knew better than to say anything, I’d think someone was forcing him to make this request. He didn’t sound very pleased about Holmes being involved with anything to do with the precinct.” Greg smiled tightly, closer to a grimace. “Or our department.”

John shook his head, trying to make sense of Greg’s comment. The DA was the DA; he was at the top of the hierarchy. It was odd enough for a DA to assign an outside consultant, especially an unknown inexperienced one. But for someone to direct the DA’s hand, no matter how forceful or not… “Who has enough influence with the DA to make him assign a specific consultant?”

“That’s the question of the hour, or day,” Greg agreed with an uncertain tone. There was tightness around his eyes, and he’d started tapping his fingers on the desk. Clear signs Greg was just as irritated by this conundrum as John was. “Obviously Holmes has a connection with someone higher up, with enough power to influence the DA. Which is surprising for a novelist.”

“Very surprising,” John acknowledged in agreement. “From the little I know about him he doesn’t have any contacts in the government. And he hasn’t ever mentioned it.”

Greg laughed, freshly amused. “What, are you the expert on Sherlock Holmes, novelist, now?”

“No, no!” John quickly blurted out. And when Greg gave him a knowing look John could feel his ears burning. “Nothing like that.”

“I’ll keep looking into it, John,” Greg promised fervently, letting his hand hang at his side. “I’m not just letting it go, I want to know who can influence the DA like this just as much as you do.” He lowered his voice again. “In the meantime, go back to your team and work this case. Uncover information, talk to people, follow leads. Go solve this case and find our murderer.”

“Yes sir,” John replied with a firm conviction. It was extremely reassuring to know Greg had so much faith in him and Sally and Clara. They both knew working together as a team would be the best way to solve this. How more of a help Holmes would be was unclear.

“Keep me updated on this John. I’d like to know about any or all developments.” Greg told him confidingly. “And let me know about Holmes. I’ll watch him as much as I can but you’re the one who will see everything. If he causes trouble…”

“I’ll let you know,” John agreed, making his own promise. “About both.”

“Thanks then, detective,” Greg said warmly, dismissing him. He walked around his desk to sit down heavily in the chair. “I’ll talk with you more later.”

“Thanks Chief,” John replied, waving as he turned and walked to the door. With a turn of the doorknob John opened the door and stepped back into the main room.


	2. Chapter 2

He waited for another officer to walk by before moving towards his team. Sally and Clara still had their backs to him. From the noise of rapidly tapping keys Clara was speed typing with her usual flair while Sally stood over her shoulder, reading from a notepad in a low voice. They gave no sign of noticing John as he came closer.

Holmes, John came to see, was practically sprawled within the confines of the chair he was occupying. He was sitting slouched down with his legs extended out into the limited space between the desks. Holmes had apparently even dressed up for the occasion, in a full suit and dress shirt. Which was nicer than John typically dressed day to day for work.

Holmes appeared to be reading from one of the confidential case files off a pile on Clara’s desk. He was enthusiastically absorbing its contents, and a stack of more files was sitting next to him waiting for their turn at his attention.

John hastily quickened his steps and crossed just in front of the desks. “Morning everyone, again.” Draping his jacket over the back of his chair, John glanced over at Holmes who appeared to still be focused solely on the file. “Holmes, I see you’ve already started helping yourself to our case files.”

“Just doing my best to familiarize myself with all you’ve discovered so far, detective,” Holmes murmured distractedly, from behind the barrier of the file. John was almost certain he’d meant the title mockingly, but he wasn’t able to see Holmes’ expression to make sure. “Which, it seems, is not very much.”

“It’s a brand new day, anything could happen,” John replied, adding an extra layer of cheerfulness just to see Holmes’ reaction.

But he only made a quiet, noncommittal hum and closed the file. Seeing Holmes’ expression didn’t help John at all, since it seemed carefully blank. Meanwhile Holmes reached over and set the file on Sally’s desk before taking the next file. 

“Well, while our guest enjoys our extremely interesting files,” Sally commented into the silence, turning away from the desk to look at the rest of them with her notepad still in hand. “There are some new details we can catch you up on.”

“Excellent.” John leaned back against his desk and nodded at her. “Go on then, impress me.”

Clara’s rapid fire typing abruptly stopped and she spun her chair around to face them all. “Success boss!” Clara announced with a wide grin. “I’ve found our victims phone.”

“Good job, Clara. I knew you could do it,” John congratulated her. Clara’s unofficial position of tech genius on their team was absolutely well deserved. She could bend any piece of technology to her will. 

“Like we had any doubt,” Sally affirmed, patting Clara on her shoulder. “Any hidden treasures you’ve discovered?”

“Mm, possibly. It’s actually still in his office, or that’s what the locator chip says. Can you believe it’s still on? Not so smart of the murderer, or if our victim was trying to hide from someone.”

“Yes, because every common person on the street knows the semantics of logging into someone’s mobile account and activating the GPS capability on the device. Or is aware there is a GPS tracker for their mobile,” Holmes drawled in a sarcastic tone. John glanced over to see the man was still pretending to be reading a new file.

Clara snapped her fingers and pointed at Holmes. “Hey, no stealing my glory.”

While Holmes’ promptly withdrew behind the file again Sally and John exchanged amused looks.

“He shouldn’t have chosen such an easy password, seriously,” Clara criticized, leaning back in her chair. “Doesn’t anyone learn?”

“Focusing, Clara,” John instructed, waving his hand at her in hopes of refocusing her attention. “What else?”

“Well I’ve let the uniforms know where it is, so they’ve gone to retrieve it for us. It would be really helpful to have his actual computer to look over, but apparently that’s still in evidence and only the techs are allowed to touch it,” Clara sighed, clasping her hands together in her lap. “Plus it’s apparently ancient. Generations of models back.”

“So he had an ancient computer at his office that he worked on, but for his cell he had some kind of smartphone?” John summarized aloud. “That doesn’t make much sense. Why have a modern, advanced phone but still use an outdated one for his important business work? If he’s a lawyer wouldn’t he want an up to date computer? To keep his files and client information on, or for emails and research?”

“You shouldn’t trust any lawyer, they’re all focused on only one thing in the long run.” Holmes advised, ending the pretense and focusing all of his attention on them again. The file was closed and set precariously on his lap. “They care only about getting money and being paid. Your victim was likely exactly the same.”

John shook his head in disagreement. “Mm, not buying it. If he was more concerned with money then why did he live in that apartment and in that area of the city? There weren’t that many appointments in his calendar either, so he didn’t have a lot of clients. Or at least not many paying ones.”

“We need to get a hold of his financials, see if there’s anything unusual in them.” Sally announced, tapping the notepad against her leg. “I bet there’s something in there.”

“Fishy financials of a guy who was killed by some unknown psycho murderer. Then after his death his place was tossed and most of his papers were burned or are missing?” Clara commented dryly, a smirk pulling at her mouth. “How surprising.”

John nodded at Clara, in complete agreement yet without most of her sarcasm. “Exactly. Can you look into that for us?”

“On it boss,” Clara quickly replied, then spun her chair around back to her computer and started typing rapidly again.

While Clara was occupied with getting access to their victim’s financials, and John knew better than to interrupt her while she was working, John turned to Sally. “Any update on our victims family? Or any friends? Or anyone who knew him?”

“I wish,” Sally sighed. “CSU did a second sweep of the scene but there’s still no sign of any address book or any letters or mail between family or friends. Also, still no wallet.”

“Not good,” John breathed quietly. “We need that wallet, it’ll give us confirmation about who he is and more about his life. Especially his credit card, license, any business cards…”

“I’m certain between the three of you you’ll find another just as successful method,” Holmes told him confidently; in a way that John wondered if it was meant to be reassuring. “You are a detective, so…” He waved a hand. “Detect.”

John flexed his hand several times, waiting out his patience. “It’s not that simple, Holmes,” John insisted. “We can’t make evidence and leads appear out of thin air.”

“Shouldn’t you know that?” Sally asked, raising an inquiring eyebrow. “You do write crime novels don’t you?”

Holmes side-eyed her carefully, eyes narrowed. “I do write detective novels, yes. And I pride myself on following correctly police procedure as well as creating realistic criminals.” He pushed himself into a mostly upright position in his chair, and then clasped his hands together. 

“However,” Holmes treated them all to a winning smile, leaning forward. “This is my first experience working with real police detectives and officers on a homicide case. So I’m sure I will learn quite a lot from all of you by the time we solve it together.”

“Yes, you seem very excited,” Sally muttered. She turned and dropped the notepad onto her desk with the files, loose papers, and other debris that came from working long hours. “As long as you don’t get in our way. Or hamper our investigation. Then fine.”

Sally had always had a sharp tongue and didn’t like any complications that hindered or disrupted their investigation. Still, John had hoped Sally and Holmes’ personalities wouldn’t clash too severely. But that didn’t seem to have much chance of happening.

“Settle down you two,” John scolded, trying to soothe any ruffled egos. “We’re supposed to work together so that is what is going to happen.”

Sally and Holmes pointedly didn’t look at him or at each other.

“Now,” John continued, leaning back. “What else do we know?”

“Like Clara said, the techs are working on the computer right now. Or it’s over with them and hopefully they’ll get to it soon.” Sally said, a hint of irritation still in her voice. “They’re also supposedly working on decoding that strange coded note we found on his desk.”

“Do you mean this note?” Holmes interrupted smoothly. He opened the file again and, after a brief pause to rifle through the pages, pulled out a photocopy of the note. “You haven’t figured it out yet? How difficult can it be?”

John turned fully to Holmes, giving the man his complete attention. “Please don’t tell me you’ve already figured it out. I wouldn’t believe that for a second. How would you even know where to start with decoding it?”

Holmes didn’t look impressed by John’s faithless comment at all. “I created my own code solely for use in my novel so my characters could write coded messages. Codes are typically not very complicated at all when you examine them closely.”

“But you didn’t decode it,” John cut him off before he could continue with the non-answers. “So we still don’t have any idea what it says.”

“One more thing,” Sally said, clearing her throat to get everyone’s attention again. “When the uniforms went back to the victims apartment, they had a chance to talk to the building manager again.”

“Oh, excellent,” John said pleased, smiling at her. “What did she say this time?”

“Well,” Sally reached back and picked up the notepad again. She started reading off of it. “She had the usual to say about our victim, ‘quiet, and kept to himself.’ The only problems she ever had with him was that sometimes he was late on his rent month to month. But he always followed up and paid her in full eventually. She also said he sometimes had visitors at late hours or early in the mornings, but they were never rowdy or very noisy.”

“What kinds of visitors? Any of a criminally inclined nature?” John asked interested, and a little hopeful.

Sally laughed quietly, and tilted her head slightly. “She wasn’t very clear about that either. The officers commented she actually became hostile around that point, and claimed she wasn’t in the habit of spying on her tenants. She didn’t care about their personal lives as long as they didn’t bother her and paid their rent.”

“She’s lying,” Holmes broke in before John could respond. “Older ladies everywhere enjoy endless gossip with anyone who asks. And being the landlady of her building, her tenants would be the main focus of any information she would collect.” He fixed them all with a knowing look, eyebrows lifted dramatically. “It’s obvious she isn’t telling you most of what she knows. You shouldn’t let her keep important information from you. No one suspects older ladies, therefore they are the perfect ones to know any pertinent information.”

Sally rolled her eyes in response then started to twirl the pen in her hand. “You’re giving us advice about how to question people? What, do you think we haven’t been doing our jobs sufficiently until you appeared?”

Holmes shifted in his seat, turning towards her. “Well it does seem like there are an awful lot of criminals out in the city. It does make one wonder…”

John knew he really should be incensed by that observation, but instead he couldn’t help the laugh that escaped from his mouth. He laughed and felt something unfurl in his chest that had previously been curled up tight and ignored. It especially felt warm when Holmes’ mouth curled in what could loosely be called a smile, as if he was sharing in John’s amusement.

But then Sally glanced to him, irritation clear in her expression. So John coughed and reined in his laughter. “So what else did the landlady have to say? Anything more about our victim?” John asked her, eager to have any and all new details his team had uncovered.

She shook her head, frowning disappointedly. “Not really. They asked her if she knew any more about our victims visitors, or if he had any frequent or repeat visitors.” Sally shrugged one shoulder. “According to the uniforms account she repeated that she didn’t keep tabs on her tenants, or who came to visit. It wasn’t any of her business, so it wasn’t the police’s business either. And finally,” Sally added with a flourish, “When they asked if the building had a security guard or any cameras, she laughed and asked if the building looked like the Ritz.”

“That’s a definite no then,” John declared with an irritated sigh. They were only at the start of this case and already they were finding so many dead ends. “Well I suppose it was worth a try.”

“The uniforms said they’d make another canvas, see if anyone saw anything or if any of the other buildings have cameras,” Sally added, focusing on scribbling on her notepad. “But they both said they didn’t expect any results.”

“Are those the same two I sent to get our vic’s phone?” Clara spoke up, her rapid typing coming to a finale with a firm click of her computer mouse. “Because I’ve just finished a warrant for his financials, and halfway through that I realized ‘hey, why not do one for his phone and computer while I’m at it?’”

She kicked her foot against the floor to turn her chair back around, and smiled up at Sally. Then she looked over at John. “As soon as we have the phone we’ll be able to get into it and hopefully that will clear up some things. And if his bank cooperates, we’ll soon have his financials too.”

John chuckled lightly in delight at Clara’s quick thinking and preparedness. “Well done, Clara. At this rate we’ll have this case wrapped up by nightfall.”

“Not quite by nightfall I’d imagine,” Holmes disagreed calmly, replacing the photocopy of the note inside the file. “I have a feeling this case will turn out to be slightly more complicated than being solved by mobile and financial records.”

“Does that mean you don’t want us to solve this quickly?” Sally asked crossly, folding her arms across the notepad. “I thought the chief said that was the whole reason you’re working with us.”

Clara, smiling slightly, glanced sideways over to Holmes. “I’m sure Mr. Holmes wants to have this case closed just as quickly and efficiently as we do. I think he just meant he hopes it turns out to be a little more exciting, that’s all. Which,” she looked knowingly at Sally, “is a feeling I think we all share.”

“Mmph,” Sally replied, not really saying anything. All though she did look a little appeased. “Well, we’ll know whether or not that’s true once we get those records.”

“Exactly,” John said after a long pause of silence. He shifted to stand a little straighter and said, “We have a lot more investigating to do before then.”

“I’ll get right on submitting those requests, boss,” Clara announced, gesturing over her shoulder at her computer screen. “End of the day, hopefully, with any luck.”

“There’s no such thing as luck; only the mainstream belief in coincidences which are in fact the result of hard work,” Holmes offered smugly, with that same tone again. He tapped the folder against his leg. “Have the boxes of mail I asked Molly to send arrived yet?”

After a few seconds John realized Holmes was asking him, so he looked over at him instead of where Clara had went off to get the papers she’d printed. “No, I don’t think so. If they had someone would have brought them to my desk or at least have let me know they were here. Don’t worry, we’ll know when they come.”

“Right, of course,” Holmes nodded agreeably, but not looking directly at John. “Have you been able to identify your victim at all?”

John shook his head, stopping his pacing between the desks. “Not yet, no. We’re waiting for our ME’s official report, but right now we’re working on the assumption he’s the owner of the apartment. That’s where we are now.”

“How infuriating the length of time these examinations take in real detective work,” Holmes replied in the dry, sarcastic tone John was beginning to associate with Holmes’ apparent sense of humor. “The victim is more likely to have been killed in his own apartment than someone else's. Although you still don’t seem to have found out very much concrete information about him.”

Sally dropped into Clara’s momentarily abandoned chair, swiveled around to the computer, and pulled up the police record database on the screen. She slowly typed in their supposed victims name then pressed enter and sat back.

John walked closer and looked over Sally’s shoulder at the computer. From the corner of his eye he saw Holmes shift in the chair then lean over to see the screen as well. While she waited Sally drummed her fingers on top of the mouse.

Finally the computer beeped and showed a message saying one record had been found. Sally clicked on the message and it changed to reveal the typically awful mug shot with a short list of prior run-ins with the law. They all silently read through the entire record on their own.

Holmes was the first to speak, and to voice what they were all probably thinking. “An interesting record, and a surprisingly varied one. But not enough to make someone kill him in such an elaborate way.”

“Likely true,” John sighed resignedly, resting a hand on the back of Sally’s chair. “Petty theft, B&E, car theft,” he paused as Sally scrolled further down the page. “And… there we are, multiple threats made by previous clients. Yet none that became actual law suits.”

Sally continued to scroll down through the page. “Nothing in the last year, just the threats by his clients. He definitely wasn’t a very nice man.”

“Criminals rarely are. No wonder he didn’t have many clients,” John said mostly to himself. But he noticed Holmes glance at him. “Any information about contacts or family, or friends?”

Sally scrolled through the page one last time. “Mm, doesn’t look like it. No emergency contact even, or any known acquaintances in his file.” She tilted her head back to look up at John. “Sorry boss.”

“It was worth a try,” John told her reassuringly, patting the top of the chair. He turned around to think for a minute. “Well, we do have his client files, that would be the next place to look. Maybe we’ll find a former client with a motivating grudge there.”

“If he was as horrible a lawyer as he seemed, it wouldn’t be surprising if all his former clients held some type of grudge,” Holmes commented, standing up from his chair. “You may have your pick of suspects soon enough.”

“We can only hope,” John smiled winningly at Holmes then waved a hand for the man to follow him. “The files should be in one of the conference rooms, we can look over them in there.”

“You said his computer is still with the technicians,” Holmes reminded him as they started walking off towards the conference rooms. “So why would we need to- oh, the physical files? Couldn’t we possibly look over his digital copies instead?"

John stopped walking when Holmes had, only a row of desks away from where Sally was typing at the computer. John just listened as Holmes started on a tirade about how much of an idiot their victim obviously was; it was honestly amusing, seeing how much this little quirk irritated him.

When Holmes finally seemed to wind down John offered amiably, “I regret having to tell you this, Holmes, but I keep written records about my cases. Our entire records room consists of paper files.”

Holmes waved this away like it didn’t matter. “You’re police, of course you have paper files of all your investigations. You’d need paper trails and physical copies of everything. I’m also certain your police system would cease to function without the existence of ‘paperwork.’

When Holmes was forced to draw a breath after his rapid speech John took the opportunity to quickly interrupt. “Paperwork is the bane of every profession, Holmes. Somehow everything generates even more paperwork. With lawyers it’s the same with client files.”

“Apparently,” Holmes said shortly. “And since you currently only have the paper files, how much longer will it take to go through them all?”

“Hopefully not much longer,” John replied reassuringly, silently adding his own plea that he would be right. “But if we don’t start now it’ll end up taking even longer.”

Holmes sighed noisily, with possibly just a little dramatic edge. “I must admit, I thought real police work would be slightly more exciting… and, faster paced.” His fingers danced at his side. “How can you possibly stand this every day?”

“I’ve gotten used to it. And really, it’s not that boring or slow. You just haven’t witnessed the more exciting parts yet.” John defended. “There are highs and lows. But it’s always very labor intensive.”

“Mm,” Holmes only replied, not offering one of his dry responses. John suspected he was focusing more on thinking over something.

Just when John was about to start towards the conference rooms again, the phone on his desk began ringing. He could see the light flashing on the top of the base.

“Give me a minute,” John said and quickly walked back between the desks. He stopped on the opposite side of his desk and reached out to pick up the handset. “Watson.”

“Good morning, John. Such a wonderful day isn’t it?” Sarah’s cheerful voice, a little too cheerful really, greeted from the other end of the line. “I hope you’re having a good day so far.”

John laughed and shifted the phone to his other hand. “Good morning, Sarah,” he greeted calmly in comparison. “How many of those energy drinks have you had already?”

Sarah ‘hmm’-ed thoughtfully, and he heard equipment clattering in the background. “How would you classify ‘already’? What’s your timeframe?”

John huffed, mainly amused. Sarah had always been technically minded, and detail focused. “Since… say, you received the evidence from my case?”

“Oh, then…” Sarah was silent before she finally said, in good humor. “You probably don’t want to know.”

“Fair enough,” John agreed, curling his fingers around the phone. “So what do you have for me, Sarah?”

“Well,” Sarah answered, taking a deep breath and then started to talk rapidly. “I have some results I think you’ll be very excited about. I was able to examine those ashes you found. Being ashes they were too burnt of course, and someone really wanted your man dead didn’t they? But there were bones in there too, and- lucky for you- teeth. Not in their natural form of course, but still usable. I entered them into the database, just on a chance, and -ding, ding, ding! - match!”

John sucked in a breath then leaned over his desk to scramble for a notepad and pen. “You’re a miracle worker, Sarah. What else do you have?”

He turned his head as far as he could without getting tangled in the phone cord to look at Holmes as the man walked back over. Holmes came to stand a little too close for John’s comfort, listening in. John tried to move away a little without being too obvious, but Holmes didn’t seem to notice. So John turned his attention back to Sarah who was still talking in his ear. “Sorry, Sarah, could you say that again?”

“I said, I found a match for those teeth in the ashes you found,” Sarah said chidingly but not annoyed. John just knew she was shaking her head at him. “They’re the same as those on record for your victim. Since he’s been in the system and logged before, I could find his records easily. Surprise!”

“Like I said, genius, Sarah,” John praised easily. “So you’re saying you’re officially confirming our victim's identity? He really is John McFarland, the private attorney?”

“Well I don’t know about the private attorney part. But otherwise, just like I said.” Sarah answered in confirmation. “There is one thing though, John, that I think you should know.”

John leaned sideways against the desk and shifted so he could write more easily. “Go on then, I’m ready to hear it.”

“No… No, I think you should come down. See it for yourself and everything.” Sarah said slowly, and he heard her computer beep several times as she spoke.

John looked over his shoulder at the clock on the wall, then at the conference room where the files were waiting for them. “Any way we can discuss it over the, er-” John searched for the right term, “video chat? It’s still set up isn’t it? And it’s secure.”

“Pretty sure it is, since I used it just a few days ago,” Sarah commented, sounding amused as she often did by his struggle with technology. “Can you set it up and then call me?”

“Sure, I think I can do that. I’ll be right there.” John agreed, “Then you can tell me all you’ve found.”

“I’ll be waiting eagerly, John,” Sarah promised with a faint laugh. “I hear you have a new colleague following you around.”

John set the notepad and pen back down on his desk. “That’s one way of saying it.”

“Ooh, intriguing,” Sarah said eagerly. “I’ll see you soon.”

The phone clicked in his ear, a sign Sarah had hung up abruptly. John set the phone back on the base on his desk. Then he turned to the side to find Holmes standing right there, barely a foot away.

“Uhm,” John said coherently, then licked his lips. “We’ve had a change in plans. Sarah, our ME, has something she wants to show me.”

Holmes didn’t reply for a long moment, or move away from him. He just looked. Then Holmes finally said on a sigh of realization, “You have a history with her.”

“What, of course not,” John quickly denied, shaking his head. He stayed where he was, deciding if Holmes could stand this close then he could as well.

When Holmes continued to just look at him, remaining quiet this time, John found himself giving in slightly. “Okay, maybe yes, we do. But it’s barely worth mentioning. It’s been over for years.”

Holmes’ mouth twitched. “Is she aware of that?”

“Of course she is, we agreed together to break it off.” John explained, not really sure why he was bothering. He sighed and ran a hand over his face. “If you’re finished questioning me about my private life, we have somewhere to be.”

Holmes visibly brightened at this news. “You’ll let me come with, to talk to your ME?”

John laughed at the supposedly simple question. “Like I would be able to stop you. I have a feeling even if I did say no you’d still find a way to sneak in.”

At Holmes’ silence, and flickering gaze, John took that as the answer it was. “That’s what I thought,” he said and picked the notepad up again. “Come on.”

John nodded towards the small secure conference rooms towards the back of the main room. He began walking and was pleased to notice Holmes following a few steps behind.

They arrived at the end of the rows of desks just in time to cross paths with Clara, who was coming back towards their group of desks. She stopped when she noticed them and looked at both of them expectantly.

“Where are you two off to?” Clara asked, holding a small pile of papers.

John stopped short and glanced to the side at Holmes. “Sarah has something for us. We’re going to go video… meet with her.”

“Video conference,” Clara corrected kindly, familiar with John’s consistent struggle with technology. She’d been with him a few times when he’d gone to the grocers and made the mistake of trying to use the self-checkout. “Well, hopefully she’ll have something that gives us a lead. Or something to look into until those warrants I just sent off come back.”

“Sarah always finds us something,” John said confidently. And it really was the truth; Sarah could find things-evidence- most people would miss. “She will this time.”

“She must indeed be impressive if she can find such evidence from human ashes and teeth,” Holmes observed, sounding reluctantly impressed. He also seemed to be smirking just a little.

John treated him to an annoyed almost-glare. “I see you’ll be filling our vacancy for resident skeptic,” he told Holmes. Then John turned his attention back to Clara. “Could you and Sally start on those client files? Make different piles: motive, no motive, possible motive…”

“I got it boss, you can count on us,” Clara promised with a bright smile for John. She winked at Holmes and resumed her path towards their desks.

John started towards one of the secure rooms, waving the hand with his notepad at Holmes to instruct him to follow. “Let’s go, Sarah doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Holmes, being surprisingly obedient, followed him while saying, “I would think working with dead bodies would give her nothing but patience.”

John was unable to hold back a laugh at Holmes’ comment. Apparently the man could be funny. “Sarah is very experienced in her job. She’s been working with the deceased for years and is well trained.” He paused before adding, “Although I’m not sure how much patience factors into it.”

They arrived at the windowless door to the secure conference room. John rapped twice on the door out of custom before twisting the knob and opening it with a slight push.

The room inside was relatively sparse, even for a working room in a police station. John flipped the switch to turn on the single light, which illuminated the wooden table in the middle of the room with a keyboard and mouse, the computer monitor on the brick wall, and the two metal chairs on either side of the table. There was no window in the room, which made it feel even more cramped and small.

John closed the door and locked it behind them. He walked towards the far side of the table and cast a quick glance to Holmes, hoping the man wasn’t claustrophobic or disliked small spaces. It had taken him a few times to shake the trapped feeling he suffered whenever he was in here. Now it was to the point where he could only just stand it.

Holmes didn’t follow John’s example and take a seat in the other chair. Instead he stayed standing just behind the empty chair, looking down at John from an unfairly intimidating height.

John, for his part, tried to ignore Holmes’ unnerving staring as he reached for the keyboard and mouse. When John tapped on the keyboard the monitor woke up with a protesting beep. It displayed a login screen asking for his credentials, which was standard for all the precinct computers.

John leaned forward slightly over the table to see the keyboard better. He squinted down at the keys as he entered his badge number and password. John wanted to avoid making a mistake because then he would have to reenter it all over again, and John could already sense the irritation coming off Holmes.

When John was nearly done entering his password Holmes finally erupted, “Are you doing it that slowly on purpose, or do you honestly not know how to do more than just peck at the keys.”

John paused in his absolutely not pecking with his fingers hovering just above the keys. He glanced over to Holmes. “This is how I normally type. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry but I can’t help it. And I’m not telling you my credentials under any circumstances; one because I know how terrible of an idea that is, and two, I don’t want to imagine what you’d do with them.”

Holmes’ mouth twisted in an annoyed frown, but his eyes betrayed his amusement. As if he knew what John meant, and agreed with it. John acknowledged that understanding, absorbed it, and then pointed a stern finger at the chair across the table from him. The one Holmes was still refusing to sit in for some reason. “So sit down, let me finish, and then we’ll talk with Sarah and see what she knows.”

Holmes kept silent without any witty comment, pressing his lips firmly together. Then finally he gave a small, jerky nod and gracefully dropped into the chair. He promptly crossed one leg over the other and crossed his arms defiantly across his chest.

Well, all right then, John thought. He returned to the keyboard and resumed typing out his password. Once he finished he hit the ‘return’ key with a firm tap.

The computer display changed to show the police department main screen. John moved the mouse over to one of the icons on the screen, and double clicked on the one for the ‘official intergovernmental communication and messaging’ program.

It took over a minute to open and load, and while it did John patiently watched the screen as Holmes apparently gave in to temptation and drummed his fingers on the table. John gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it.

Finally the program loaded, and now displayed a menu of options. John selected the video chat one then had to select the ME office from a list of all available departments. He clicked on it, and waited for the program to connect.

“Are you finished yet?” Holmes asked, voice sharp with impatience. John glanced over to see Holmes had slid down slightly in his chair so he could rest his head against the top of the chair. In the poor lighting John couldn’t tell if his eyes were closed or not.

“Yes actually, I am,” John confirmed, a little more tersely than he meant to. “You can come-”

“John!” Sarah’s voice greeted happily, slightly tinny through the monitors speakers. “Took you long enough. Did something delay you, or was it the computer again?”

John didn’t quite restrain his self-deprecating smile. “It was the computer, of course. Sorry to make you wait.” He tilted his head. “What did you want to show me?”

On the video screen Sarah smiled at him, arms crossed over a metal clipboard. “You have no sense of suspense, John. Such a pity.”

Suddenly her expression changed completely to one of surprise and almost… what was that, glee? Her eyes were wide but she quickly closed her mouth again. With a delighted grin Sarah greeted, “Why, hello there.”

It didn’t take a detective to figure out Holmes must have moved from the chair to walk around and stand behind him.

When Holmes offered a clipped, level, “Hello,” from behind John’s shoulder his theory was proven.

Sarah smiled a little tightly at Holmes, then looked to John with a friendly, teasing look. “Is this your new rookie that’s been following you around?”

Before John could answer to correct her Holmes spoke instead. 

“Hardly. I have never and would never feel any desire to become part of your police force,” Holmes corrected firmly, speaking rapidly. “I’m here with Detective Watson in more of a consulting capacity.”

Sarah’s smile disappeared completely to be replaced by a confused frown. “‘Consulting capacity’? I thought it was against some rule to have consultants work with the department on ongoing cases.”

“Typically yes,” John agreed with a quiet sigh, leaning back a little. “But Greg, Chief Lestrade, has given his approval. So Holmes will be lending his knowledge and experience to help us with this case in any way he can.”

“Riight,” Sarah slowly drew out the word, appearing as unsure about if this was a good idea as John felt. “Well you’ve definitely picked a strange one to help the police with. Though John is known for liking the weird ones. They’re kind of his specialty.”

“Are they really,” Holmes questioned, and he actually did sound interested by this for some reason. In the very near future John expected to be interrogated about some of the past cases.

“Oh definitely,” Sarah readily confirmed. John was almost sure she was enjoying the opportunity to tease him like this. “Anyway, I’m not entirely sure what to make of the… so-called remains you sent me. Obviously someone really didn’t like him if they murdered him in such a horrible way.”

“A murder like this does take a certain extra effort,” Holmes agreed dryly. “Otherwise all detectives would find ashes for remains at their crime scenes.”

Sarah laughed, her shoulders shaking. “Well I would definitely be kept busy if that happened.” She hesitated for a second then looked appropriately guilty at her response. “Not that I want that to happen. It would be awful.”

One thing John had always liked about Sarah was her sense of humor. “Completely awful,” he agreed straight-faced.

“See but usually when bodies are burnt, dead bodies especially, they don’t end up as completely destroyed as this one was,” Sarah began, hands gripping the sides of her clipboard as she warmed to her area of expertise. “Typically some bones or teeth are left undestroyed by a common fire like a campfire or in a fireplace. That’s because most fires started with matches and using wood and tinder can’t reach the high temperatures needed to burn a human body completely. There’s a set temperature the fire needs to reach before the body will start to destruct, and in most situations there isn’t the right conditions to reach that temperature.”

John concentrated as he tried to absorb all the information Sarah was telling them. If most typical fires weren’t capable of burning a body as completely as the remains they’d found at the scene, then their victim couldn’t have been burned like that just anywhere. “So you’re saying our victim’s murder and burning had to happen at a specific place. There’s no chance it could have happened ‘in the moment’ where the two of them just happened to be at the same time,” He stopped and kneaded at his temple. “The setting and burning after death was definitely premeditated then.”

Holmes hummed thoughtfully from just over John’s shoulder, still standing there for some reason. He asked, “If this couldn’t happen at any everyday setting then what places could it possibly happen?”

“Oh, good question,” Sarah said approvingly. She hummed and glanced off to the side. “It could be some kind of industrial oven, or anything that could reach the temperatures needed to completely burn a human body. So, obviously, a cremation incinerator at a mortuary would be another option. But if you needed something a little less obvious or more low key,” she wrinkled her nose slightly, “or didn’t have easy access to one… then, a pizza oven maybe. Like in a restaurant. Or a pottery kiln.” 

She waved her hand around in the air. “Of course the body would have to be in there a considerable time to get in the state you found it. Your killer would also need to have enough time for that to happen and be absolutely sure he wouldn’t be discovered.”

“So our murderer was familiar with the place before he committed the murder, he knew exactly what he was doing,” John theorized, trying to start to understand their murderers movements and mind. But even with the hundreds of cases he’d solved in his time as a detective, John wasn’t the one who made his living as an expert storyteller. So John paused, trying to find more connections. And he was waiting for Holmes to, hopefully, lend his expertise.

Luckily, Holmes didn’t disappoint. But he seemed to be talking more to himself as he said, “He planned his murder, he likely practiced. Interesting.”

“A little creepy and very thought out ahead of time you mean,” Sarah pointed out, looking disgusted.

“Premeditated, sure. But hopefully that will help us find him faster.” John jumped in before the two of them could turn a brainstorming session into a disagreement. “If he practiced, or was there before the murder, he may not have been as careful about being seen.” He lightly hit his knee with his fist. “We need to find that building, and the oven.”

“I’ll leave that area of detecting to you detective,” Sarah told him with a sly smile. “But before you run off, there is one more thing I need to show you.”

Sarah laughed, “There is very little running, Sarah. It’s mostly all just detecting.”

“Detecting is a very slow process from what I’ve observed so far,” Holmes commented yet with not quite the same level of irritation as before. “It’s a point in your favor that most criminals aren’t very bright.”

“As police we like to gather all our facts first before we go chasing after suspects,” John explained, turning in his chair to look at Holmes. “We tend to find that cuts down on time spent chasing after dead ends and unnecessary conversations or arrests. Facts are essential and important to solving our cases.”

“Of course they are,” Holmes replied in a tone John was beginning to suspect was his ‘you’re being an idiot’ voice. “How else would you develop a suspect pool with possible motives? Or prove a criminal did in fact commit a crime. Your entire process rests on the ability of police officers to gather the necessary and crucial information. Which, in itself, is extremely faulty. You’re depending on human bodies to make sure you connect the relevant data.”

On the monitor Sarah smiled, the speakers picking up a soft laugh. “Oh you two deserve each other.”

John didn’t know how or what to say in response to that. So instead he decided to ignore it and change the topic. “You said you had something else to show us?”

“Right, yes,” Sarah confirmed then promptly turned and walked to the right and out of view on the monitor. Behind her was revealed a long steel examination table with an adjustable light hanging above it, and lights built into the table itself for backlighting.

The examination table was covered with a white cloth that hung over the sides, and resting on top of the cloth were three square containers. John could see the burnt top plate of a skull rising barely over the sides of one of the containers. But he couldn’t see what was in the others.

Sarah came back on screen, now standing beside the examination table and positioned so she didn’t have to look over her shoulder at them. “Like I said,” she began again, setting the clipboard down on the table. “There wasn’t much of your victim left, so I wasn’t able to find out as much as if I had the entire body. It was enough of a challenge just to confirm his identity. But,” Sarah said, pulling on a pair of blue gloves, “I can offer you a theory or two based on what I do see.”

Holmes made an impatient sound before asking testily, “What good are theories when you aren’t able to be absolutely certain given the lack of complete evidence? Give us facts.”

John held up a hand to, hopefully, cut off Holmes’ tirade. “Ignore him Sarah. Anything you’ve found we can follow up on ourselves. So theories are just fine.”

Sarah shot Holmes a quick glance, mouth twisted as if she wasn’t sure she could believe John. But finally she lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “From what I can tell it’s still possible he could have been stabbed, or shot, or drugged, first. Or he died in the fire. There’s not at all enough left to tell. The only thing I can rule out is that he wasn’t shot in the head or sustained any head injury first.”

Yet another reason to find their crime scene, and the furnace or oven, as soon as possible. If they could figure out the method the murderer had used it would help them narrow down the suspect list and possible places for the murder to have taken place. Tracking their victims last few hours alive would help with that.

Sarah had apparently continued talking while John wandered off in his thoughts. He shook himself out of them and refocused on Sarah’s calm, professional narrative. 

John was startled to realize Holmes was leaning over his shoulder to see the monitor better, one hand gripping the back of John’s chair. They were surprisingly, and a bit uncomfortably, close. Wondering if Holmes even noticed what he was doing, John slowly shifted in his chair and away from the other man.

On the monitor Sarah was holding the sides of one container as she carefully moved it closer towards them. As it came closer the contents were revealed: the front part of a very thoroughly burnt skull resting amongst a collection of dried bone fragments and ashes.

It wasn’t the most gruesome or horrifying thing John had ever seen, especially when it came to parts of the human body. But still, he was all too aware that the contents of the container had once been part of an actual, human body. And a person who, no matter how awful he was, hadn’t deserved this kind of death. It only served to make John more determined to find the murderer as soon as possible.

Sarah must have been thinking something similar because she visibly stilled, pausing in using a tool to sort through the fragments and ashes. He could almost see her thinking, and steeling herself, before her shoulders went back and her head rose again.

Sarah was very much a professional, and used to dealing with human bodies. But there was still something about human ashes and bones that made death very real. He didn’t blame her for taking a moment.

She turned to look directly at him, meeting his gaze. Her face was set for a few long seconds as they looked at each other. Then Sarah’s mouth twitched almost sadly and she said quietly, “Not the worst thing we’ve ever seen, right, John?”

John couldn’t, didn’t, say anything in response. He only nodded because really, it was true.

Behind him Holmes requested calmly, nearly in John’s ear, “Bring that closer, I can’t see everything inside.”

He said it like it was a simple, ordinary request. John knew Holmes was as human as he was, but for a moment he wondered if Holmes was alarmed or sickened at all by the ashes. But John wasn’t brave enough to look at the other man to find out.

Sarah sighed quietly but tilted the container slightly for them to see inside it better. “I’ve looked over everything and there’s not much else I can get from them. But I did find a surprise or two as well.” 

She reached over to the side of the table and picked up a pair of tweezers. She used them to sort through the container before giving a soft exclamation and pinching the two sides together. With a look of concentration Sarah slowly raised her hand, drawing something out of the container.

John leaned forward to see better and felt a wave of surprise when he saw the small golden nugget held carefully in the tweezers. “That was with the rest of the ashes and bones?”

“What is it?” Holmes asked, and John’s chair creaked slightly as he put more weight on the back. “Some piece of jewelry?”

Sarah shook her head, carefully turning the nugget around. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s a gold filling from one of your victim's teeth. I found two other ones, which match the dental records on file.”

“Gold fillings,” John mused, finding a spark of humor that there was one more unique way to be identified after death.

Sarah carefully placed the nugget back inside the container and set the tweezers aside on the table. 

“I can understand a lawyer with money troubles serving time in jail for numerous criminal acts, but how would he be able to afford multiple expensive gold fillings?” Holmes inquired, sounding intrigued.

John sat back in his chair, moving away from the monitor and the table. “Well, obviously he more respectable than we thought.” 

At Holmes’ dry laugh John continued, massaging his forehead gently, “I have a feeling the further we get in this case the more disreputable facts we’ll find out about our victim.”

Sarah smiled at this. “I’d be interested in what else you do find out.” She shifted the container slightly. “But that really is all I have for you I’m afraid.”

“Right, well you’ve been very helpful, Sarah,” John assured her, starting to stand up. “Oh, one more question,” he said, sitting back down again. “Any chance of a time of death? Or even a window for us to use?”

Sarah rolled her eyes good-naturedly as she clucked, “You and your timeline maps. Since all that was found were ashes and fragments it’s a lot more difficult to say… but the body would have taken ninety minutes to two hours to burn to this state in a standard cremation. That and the fact he was likely killed before, and I believe the remains were there for a time before they were found… A day, at least, earlier?”

Now John did stand up from his chair, but bent down to keep in view of the monitor. “Wonderful, thanks again, Sarah. Great work as always.”

“No problem, keep me posted!” Sarah replied quickly, falling back on her easy cheerfulness.

She waved a goodbye. Then the video window went dark and the computer's default background reappeared.

“Well, that was enlightening,” Holmes commented still just behind John.

John turned to see the other man’s gaze was not still on the monitor, but fully on him.

It threw John for a moment. He straightened his posture and cleared his throat once, then twice, a little too forcefully. “Yes it was, I think we have some actual leads we can work off of now.”

Holmes appeared surprised by John’s response, as if it wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. Possibly he’d been mulling over something else entirely. 

His expression quickly faded back into smugness before he spoke again. “For a detective you do reveal quite a wealth of information about yourself that I don’t believe you mean to.”

John didn’t really mean to, but he went on the defensive at Holmes’ observation. His chin jerked, jaw set, and he had to fight not to cross his arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?” Holmes hummed sounding amused by John’s denial. He tilted his head slightly, and all of a sudden fixed that laser-like gaze on John again.

Before John could even open his mouth to protest Holmes had begun talking rapidly, the words flying from his mouth. “Yesterday I asked if the reason you came to this city was due to your eagerness to become a detective for this city in particular. But now I realize I was mistaken. You came not because you were running towards something but because you were running away. What then were you running from?”

Holmes took a step towards him around the chair, and John resisted the urge to move back accordingly. Instead he firmly stood his ground and tried to relax despite the confrontation.

“You weren’t a detective with the Yard, if you were in homicide I would at least know of you. And you’re relatively new to this occupation; you only started after you came to this country. Back in London you had an entirely different occupation.” 

Holmes was listing off facts about John, about part of his private history, as if all of it was obvious to anyone. Yesterday John had found this ability of Holmes’ amazing and brilliant, but now it was starting to dig a little too deep. 

“Not police but something equally honorable. You’re the type who does their best while helping others and the public. So if not police then what.”

“I’d rather not go into that,” John forced out, doing his best to keep his voice level and not completely hostile.

Holmes ignored him completely, leaning even more intently in towards John. “Your ME, Sarah, requested your expertise about the victims remains not just because she is closely familiar with you. It was also for your professional knowledge, more specifically for your medical knowledge. Earlier you mentioned the two of you have a history together; a history I suspect extends further than just your time as a police officer. You knew her before then. You were also familiar with the circumstances concerning human remains and golden fillings, and both you and Sarah mentioned you’ve seen worse than the gruesome remains we’ve been dealing with.”

Holmes voice lowered, and a small, sharp smile pulled at the edges of his mouth. “What was it, detective, why were you unable to continue your career as a medical practitioner? So you ran all the way to America, changed careers, and hoped no one would look closer to uncover your previous careers? Unlikely.”

John’s blood was boiling at this point. He couldn’t keep still, he need to move to work off the anger. Otherwise he was very tempted to punch Holmes and that would be more than a bit not good.

“That,” John finally bit out, “is absolutely none of your goddamn business. The past is past. It does not have anything to do with the present or with us working on this case together. You keep your past to yourself and I’ll keep mine to mine. So instead of making digs at each other, let’s focus on finding this murderer so we can put him away before he can kill anyone else.”

John leaned in close, forcing the words out sharply. “Do you understand?”

Holmes, the smug seemingly all-knowing bastard, just stood there looking calm and not ruffled at all. “Still a sore subject I see.”

John rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen the stiffness in them. He smiled icily at Holmes, completely different than his typical friendly one. “A little, yeah. But what I really don’t appreciate is a stranger coming in and stirring up my personal history without any warning. That is just not on. Especially if it’s only for your own amusement and knowledge gain.”

Holmes took just the slightest step backward, but John still saw it as a win. “I was under the impression you were proud of the time you spent as a medical practitioner. That you took comfort in all the lives you saved or helped. You enjoyed it.”

John thought over the frighteningly accurate description, and tried to figure out how to respond since he had to say something. Holmes may be a stranger and alarmingly insightful… but he was also human, and all humans made mistakes- even if they did or should know better.

“I was very proud of what I was doing, and how I was helping people,” John, grudgingly, admitted while rubbing his shoulder. “But obviously it wasn’t meant to last. I made a mistake and left because I didn’t want it to haunt me.” He raised his chin and lifted a questioning brow. “Everyone makes mistakes, Mr. Holmes. I’m sure you have. What if I asked you about why you came here?”

Holmes shifted slightly his stance becoming more defensive as he glanced away for several seconds. “Point taken, detective. I,” he swallowed visibly, “was only curious. I didn’t mean to overstep your privacy.”

“Sure,” John replied but he said it mainly as an honest acknowledgement of Holmes’ not quite apology. He had a feeling Holmes didn’t apologize often, or ever. But the man was a guest in the precinct and if he wanted to stay with them he should learn to know better. Still, maybe just a warning would work this time. “We just need to cool our heads, and refocus on the case.”

Holmes nodded his agreement, sliding a hand into his pocket. “I’ll call Molly and ask why my mail hasn’t arrived yet.”

John watched him, slightly confused by the new subject change. 

Holmes drew his phone out of his pocket and John quickly interrupted, “What? No, don’t do that. She already called me earlier and said she would send them over.” He reached out a hand in an attempt to stop the other man. “They’ll arrive when they arrive.”

Holmes huffed irritably, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He didn’t sound happy about the wait. “So, what now detective?”

John half turned back to the keyboard and computer monitor so he could log himself out of the system. Once the screen showed it was logging out John picked up his notepad filled with the careful notes he’d taken, and started walking towards the door. “We start going through the hard evidence we currently have. I think taking another look at everything we found at the victim's apartment would be a good place to start.”

Holmes followed him to the door and held it after John opened it and tried to wave Holmes in front of him. “Didn’t your crime scene investigators already look through and identify any relevant evidence found in the apartment?” Holmes inquired.

“Yes,” John confirmed patiently. He finally gave in and walked out ahead of Holmes. As Holmes pulled the door closed again with a soft ‘click’ John went on, “But their job is to collect and document evidence. Ours is to connect the important evidence to our case. And I remember seeing some very interesting client files and other notebooks that I would like a closer look at.”

They started walking together back towards their group of desks, and John could practically see the gears in Holmes’ mind turning. So he wasn’t very surprised when Holmes asked in what seemed to be his odd sense of humor, “I don’t suppose you’re expecting to see within those case files a note in bright red ink plainly stating an intent to murder your victim using exactly the same method you found him in?”

John laughed, feeling something loosening within the tightness caused by all the complications developing with this case. “I’m not expecting it, no. First because that never happens since intent is rarely so plainly obvious. And secondly,” he looked over to meet Holmes’ eyes, “that would be far too easy.”

Holmes seemed to have relaxed enough to laugh quietly, ducking his head as if to hide his face even though John could still see him. “And where would be the fun in that?” He asked.

“Exactly,” John agreed. He steered them towards the conference room he’d requested the collected evidence be brought to, and where he expected Sally and Clara were busy going over all of it.


	3. Chapter 3

But once they were closer to the closest conference room John noticed Sally standing in front of the bulletin board they’d commandeered a while ago to use for visual presentations and brainstorming for their cases. She was standing in her standard thinking pose, one hand on her hip and the other rubbing her chin as she intently studied the bulletin board before her.

Sally didn’t seem to notice their approach, but John thought he saw her glance in their direction. He stopped a few feet away by the nearest desk and waited. Sally did her best thinking when she could share her ideas out loud or bounce them off someone else. So it was inevitable Sally would start speaking. Especially when she looked so irritated by whatever she was thinking about.

“This doesn’t make sense, boss,” Sally finally huffed, her words dripping with annoyance while she gestured sharply at the bulletin board. “I can’t piece it together in a way that'd be logical at all.”

If Sally had one fault it was that she insisted on everything needing to be logical and having to have a reason. If something didn’t follow logically Sally always had difficulty with it. Which sometimes meant she was always the practical, logical voice during their even most twisted and outside the box cases.

He could have expected Sally would find this one troubling. So John stepped forward and asked, “What is it Sally? What exactly isn’t working for you?”

She turned so she could look at him and the board at the same time. “I’ve put up everything we have about this case and our victim.” Sally shook her head once. “At least what we have so far.”

John moved until he was standing next to her. Then he turned to consider the board. John looked over the photographs of the victim, the apartment, the remains, and some of the evidence they’d collected. Below the collection of photographs Sally appeared to have tried to work out a timeline of their victim's last hours alive. But there were only a few marks in black marker on the timeline, and all long after Sarah’s given time of death.

He cautiously pointed this out. “It doesn't look like we have much of a time line for our victim yet.”

Sally treated him to her ‘no, really?’ look that did much more than words could. “We’re not exactly drowning in information about our victim,” she reminded him. 

As Sally spoke she pointed to the corresponding marks on the timeline written out on the board. “There’s the time the landlady knocked on the door then went in and found him dead, then when she called the police, and when the first officers arrived on the scene. Other than that all we have are the few appointments on his calendar. The last one before he died was three days earlier.” Sally stepped back and crossed her arms. “We need more information.”

“Yes, you have two entire days to account for,” Holmes commented also studying the timeline. “Your victim may have been committing other criminal acts which helped lead to his murder.”

John was a little surprised by Holmes apparently stating the obvious. He didn’t seem the type to have the patience to do so. Out loud John just admitted, “It’s true we don’t have any real motive yet.”

Sally nodded her agreement, mouth twisting into a frown. “Clara’s in the conference room looking over the case files. She hasn’t found anything yet, but she said she’ll shout if she does.”

“And in the meantime you thought you’d work on the timeline out here on the bulletin board.”

Sally glanced over at him again. “Clara’s better at noticing details and connecting things. She’ll be faster reading through them on her own.” She waved a hand at the photographs and timeline. “And we need to keep track of all our evidence and facts as we go, so we can keep it all straight.”

“I suppose it does the task well enough,” Holmes said sounding doubtful about what he was saying.

John quickly reached out and picked up one of the markers attached to the board by velcro strips. “Well, Sarah did help us with that a little,” he said, uncapping the marker.

“Of course she did,” Sally said with a small smile. “But not enough to help crack the case?”

“Not quite,” John replied as he drew a careful vertical line across the timeline, marking out their new time of death window from a day before the landlady had ‘found’ the body to a little more than a day after the last client appointment. It was a longer and much less specific window than John liked. More than a day was harder to check than only a few hours.

Once he finished marking the new lines on the timeline John capped the marker and took a step back. “That’s our new time of death window. It’s not much I know, but it’s something. And,” John used the marker to point at the pre-death picture of their victim Sally had pinned up, “Sarah confirmed positive ID.”

Sally tilted her head to one side, considering John’s new additions. “That’s one less question to answer. What else did Sarah have to say?”

Before John could draw breath to answer, Holmes spoke up, “While you tell your fellow detective what we learned from your medical examiner, is there any actual investigating I can be helping with?”

If Holmes was going to be helpful on this case, in the future they’d need to work on patience and collaboration. John made a mental note of it. “If you can just wait a minute, we’ll go in and help Clara with the files. Or,” John paused before offering, “you can stay here and help Sally with our murder board.”

Holmes dipped his chin and replied evenly, “I suppose working on your… ‘murder board’ may be entertaining.”

Sally frowned darkly at him. “You don’t have to help. I can do the actual police work on my own.”

Holmes hummed sounding unconvinced and looked away.

A call from the other side of the room near the elevators interrupted the developing tense atmosphere. “Courier delivery for a Detective Watson?”

John turned in that direction and saw a man standing by the elevators with one hand on a cart with three mail bins stacked on it, and holding a clipboard in his other hand. Behind him was one of the guards from downstairs watching the courier attentively.

“Ah,” John floundered then turned to point a finger at Holmes and Sally. “Hold that thought,” he instructed before moving to greet the courier and his guard.

Behind him John heard Sally ask curiously, “What’s that about?”

He didn’t hear if Holmes answered or not. By then he was further away and both the guard and courier had noticed him coming. The courier’s bored expression didn’t change. But the guard recognized and nodded to him.   
John couldn’t remember her name but he smiled back anyway. “I’m detective Watson,” John announced as he stopped just in front of them. “What can I do for you?”

The courier looked him up and down then tapped the company logo on his uniform with his pen. “I’ve got a delivery of mail bins for you,” he drawled, indicating the cart he’d brought in with him. “Sign here,” the courier instructed, holding out the clipboard and pen.

John took them from the man and scrawled his signature at the bottom of the page where there was an ‘x’ marked. It was a somewhat legible sample of his name. “There you are, thanks for bringing them.” John said as he handed back the clipboard.

The man nodded his thanks and tucked the clipboard under his arm. He pushed the bins off the cart then turned and went back to the elevators. The guard that had come with the courier smiled apologetically at John and went after the courier.

John took a moment to consider the mail bins. They were all filled with what looked like envelope letters, which meant they were likely heavy. There wasn’t any way he could lift all of them on his own. So he would have to carry them one at a time.

John reached out, bracing himself to pick up the first bin.

“Are those the letters I requested be sent to you?” Holmes asked from just behind him.

Startled, John jumped slightly making his hands slip on the bin. He straightened up and turned around to see Holmes standing right behind him, the two of them nearly nose to nose.

“Uhm,” John cleared his throat and took a measured step backward. His leg brushed against the side of one of the bins. “Yes, looks like they are.”

Holmes smiled, eyes gleaming. “Excellent.” 

He walked around John and picked up the closest bin with surprising ease. Holding it with both hands Holmes turned to John and said, “Ever since Molly refused to let me see my fan-mail I’ve become even more curious about what is in these letters.” He paused then added, “It’s unbelievable what people will confide in what they believe to be private letters.”

John chuckled as he picked up another of the bins. “Your fan-mail isn’t what you expected?”

He turned around now holding a bin himself, to find Holmes’ eyes on him. “Sometimes, no. Though Molly would know better since they’ve been with her all this time. All though I’m not sure she even reads them herself.”

“That’s such a shame,” John commented as they started walking back the way they’d come. He’d seen time and again what ego could do to a person and what it could make them do. “But now you can catch up on what you’ve been missing.”

Holmes offered him a cautious smile. “And possibly even find a suspect for you to question.”

“We can only hope.” John affirmed. He stopped at Sally’s desk and set down his bin on the chair at the end of her desk.

“Hey Sally,” John called to where she was by the bulletin board. “We have mail for you!”

She turned a little towards them. “What? What do you mean ‘mail’?”

“My publisher sent over all the letters written by my fans she’s been holding on my behalf,” Holmes explained, stopping beside John still holding his bin. “Detective Watson thought they might be helpful. Or may help us find a suspect. Or find the reason why the crime scene you found was similar to one in my novels.”

Sally shifted her attention to Holmes, treating him to a skeptical look. “You think this was all done because of you? You can’t honestly be that egotistical.” She shook her head. “Unless you wrote about a guy being burnt in an extremely violent act of murder, this has nothing to do with you.”

“It does seem like more than just a coincidence, Sally,” John said, trying to sound convincing. 

He walked over to her, carrying the bin. “We need to explore all the information we have. So, that’s why you’re going to look over the letters and see if anything raises flags.” John held the bin out to her, and shook it a little when she didn’t take it right away. 

“Why me?” Sally asked with a slight token protest.

“Because Clara is already looking over our victims files,” John reminded her, reasonably, he thought. “Everyone gets an equal share of the investigation work.”

Sally pressed her lips together but she took the bin. “Fair enough,” Sally admitted, then tilted her head. “Will you be joining me?”

John took a moment to consider. He hadn’t thought it through entirely but it made sense for them to split into pairs. It would help them go through all the evidence they had faster, and two pairs of eyes were always better.

The best option would be for him and Holmes to take the letters while Sally and Clara looked over the files at the same time. Sally and Clara were used to working together, while John was the one with the most experience with Holmes and they seemed to get along well enough. But Clara had already started on the files, and Sally had just agreed to help with the letters. So why shouldn’t they split off? If this case ended up lasting a while Sally, Clara, and Holmes needed to get used to one another. The last thing John wanted was for Holmes’ presence to create a conflict within their team.

“Holmes why don’t you work with Sally on going through your mail,” John instructed lightly but firmly. “You’ll be more familiar with the contents, and can help her separate threats from overexcited fans.”

Two almost identical and skeptical expressions were turned on him. Neither looked very pleased.

Holmes adjusted his hold on the bin. He glanced over at Sally before focusing on John. “I am perfectly capable of looking through my mail on my own, detective. The letters likely won’t be very interesting after all.”

“I’m not taking your word for that,” Sally said irritably, shaking her head and making her curls bounce. “But if they aren’t interesting then this won’t take very long, will it?” She smiled sweetly at him. “So let’s get started.”

Sally hefted the bin of mail John had given her and turned on her heel to start for the closest unoccupied conference room. John waved a goodbye to Sally then at Holmes who shot him a look before slowly following after Sally.

“I’ll bring the last bin for you,” John called after them. He headed in the direction of the elevators again to retrieve the last bin. But as he passed a conference room Clara stuck her head out.

“Hey boss, what’s going on?” She asked a little confused, with a slightly wary smile.

John stopped abruptly at her voice and walked backward several steps to stand in the doorway to the room. “Holmes’ fan letters just arrived so he and Sally are looking through them. I’ll take them the last bin and then come help you. Give you some relief.”

“‘Fan letters’?” Clara echoed, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Bet Sally’s enjoying herself. You sure it’s okay to leave them in a room together?”

John shrugged. “They’ll need to get along if Holmes’ continues working with us. Better now than later.”

“At least we’ll be nearby for the fight that’ll happen, and be able to break it up,” Clara mused, eyes wandering to the next conference room over.

“There won’t be any fight, Clara. They know better than that,” John sighed and licked his lips. “At least I hope they do.”

“Mm hmm,” Clara replied without actually agreeing with him. “Go grab that bin, boss. Then I’ll catch you up on the little I’ve discovered.”

That didn’t sound very heartening. “Right, I’ll be right there,” John promised before starting to walk away. 

He heard the door of the conference room close behind him. Clara, always a hard worker, had returned to her stacks of files.

~ ~

Sherlock walked into the conference room a step behind the detective- Sally? - his arms starting to strain from carrying the mail bin. It was a relief to set the bin on top of the table, not quite dropping it.

“Right,” the detective announced, pushing the door closed with her hip while still balancing the bin. She looked at him then set her bin down on the closest chair around the table. “Let’s get to work.”

“Excellent idea,” Sherlock agreed, glad there wouldn’t be any pointless questions he didn’t want to answer. He reached inside the bin in front of him and started taking out handfuls of letters. 

Sherlock set the letters on the table, looking over the envelopes. Some of them were bright colors, had nearly indecipherable writing, or had ridiculous cartoon or thematic stamps.

This was already feeling like an awful idea. He hadn’t argued with Molly about relinquishing his fan letters to her since he’d long ago realized he disliked people. So what made him think they would be any better in writing?

From the other side of the table the detective, Sally, huffed quietly. Sherlock looked over to see her regarding him carefully.

At least she wasn’t disguising her annoyance at his presence, which would be worse. Sherlock treated her to his best distant but polite inquiring look. “Can I help you detective?”

Her mouth pressed into a tight, firm line. “Donovan. If you’re sticking around you can call me Donovan.”

A peace offering? Interesting. “Very well, Donovan. I look forward to working with you,” Sherlock replied with all the politeness his brother feared he’d never actually learned. “You can call me Holmes, if you would.”

“Sure, Holmes,” Donovan replied, her stiff posture relaxing slightly. “Any suggestions on how to sort through all of these?”

Sherlock considered the stacks of envelopes he’d already started piling together. He looked at the bin in front of Donovan, which was nearly as full as his. “Since we already have our own bins they seem as good a starting point as any.” Sherlock pointed out, indicating her bin with his hand.

Donovan nodded her agreement and started to reach in for a handful of letters. Then she suddenly stopped. “Didn’t John say there was still another entire bin?”

“Yes,” Sherlock confirmed, focusing on organizing his piles of letters. “Detective Watson said he would bring it in for us.”

Donovan stared down into the bin, hands loosely wrapped around some of the envelopes. “That’s nice of him.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, picking up an envelope off the top of one of his piles. He wasn’t accustomed to opening envelopes; usually he let the mail pile up somewhere until Ellie gave in and opened it or badgered him into opening them himself. There didn’t seem to be any letter openers either, making the task even more bothersome.

As he and the detective began tearing open the first of many envelopes, there was a knock on the door. Donovan turned her head and called, “Come in!”

There was a pause before the door opened and Detective Watson appeared in the doorway, arms wrapped around the bin he was carrying. He gave both of them a smile with more than a hint of a grimace, and walked towards the table.

The detective set the bin on the end of the table with a solid ‘thud.’ He stepped back, rubbing his palms against the sides of his legs. “Well, enjoy,” Watson told them with more of a cheerful smile, heading back to the door. “We’ll be next door if you need me or Clara.”

“We’ll be fine, John,” Sally promised, stepping over to investigate the new bin. “Go on.”

Detective Watson sent a fond smile in her direction (only once she wasn’t looking, he was used to her pretense of bossing him around despite him being her senior, Sherlock observed), and Sherlock received a smile that wasn’t nearly as distant. That was progress wasn’t it? The detective was warming to him, possibly.

The door swiftly closed behind Detective Watson. Sherlock was left alone with a detective who was much more of a stranger to him. 

Still, no time like the present. Sherlock waited until they were both settled on either side of the table and reading over their first handful of letters. Then he purposefully pitched his voice in friendly curiosity and asked, “How long have you known Detective Watson?”

Across the table from him, sitting attentively in her chair Donovan laughed dryly. “This isn’t a chance for you to interrogate or question me about private things, Holmes.” She tapped the letter she’d been reading with the tip of her finger. “We’re here to do real police work. Even if you’re technically not part of the police.”

Sherlock looked down at the letter he was still holding. "So you expect us to just sit in silence the entire time we spend reading these letters?"

Donovan lifted one shoulder in a shrug, setting her letter aside on the table. "Sometimes silence is golden," she told him, reaching for another envelope.

Sherlock leaned back in his chair, holding up the letter a little. "A ridiculous saying. If there's only silence then how do you gather any information?"

The detective raised her head to look at Sherlock over the letter. "Are you talking about interrogating me? Because I've found silence works better to unnerve a suspect than letting them just run their mouths telling lies."

"Interesting how your mind goes immediately to interrogation," Sherlock observed, still keeping his voice amiable. Apparently, there were lines not to cross. "I meant mainly in general. I can deduce well enough based on observations and personal knowledge." He smiled. "You can also learn interesting facts from a simple conversation."

Sally tilted her head at him, brow furrowing. "I thought you were just a writer. Now you're talking like some kind of, I don't know, psychic."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and frowned at her, replying sharply, "There are no such things, as psychics. The entire notion is ridiculous. No one is able to read minds, or speak with 'the spirits.'"

Donovan huffed sounding amused, and refocused on the letter. "So, what are you then? Some kind of con artist?"

This detective was ridiculous with how she leapt around latching on to different ideas. "No, I'm not a con artist, detective. I make a living writing crime novels, yes, but not for the story or the fame. I use writing to explore the 'why' behind people's actions and motives, and how they use those reasons to do very awful things." He considered how else to explain why he enjoyed writing what he did. "Love is a very powerful motivator. Much more so than hate."

The detective was giving him a look that clearly meant she didn't believe him at all. He had mostly expected such a reaction. But Sherlock also wondered what she thought all the crimes she'd investigated were caused by instead.

Donovan hummed lightly, "I suppose." Then she leaned forward to look more closely at the letter in her hand.

Sherlock waited to see if she was going to say anything else. When she didn't Sherlock looked down and considered the letter he'd been reading. He stared at it for several seconds then set it on one of the piles he was building.

"It didn't escape my notice, Donovan," Sherlock began, introducing an edge to his voice. "That you did not answer my question. In fact you seem to be avoiding answering. So," he looked over to her, "would you like to answer, Detective?"

Donovan sighed and proceeded to roll her eyes at his question. She put the letter in the envelope and set it aside. "John, Detective Watson, is a smart, talented, detective with an impressive closing record. I enjoy working with him," Donovan answered overly serious as she picked up another envelope.

"That sounded very heartfelt, detective," Sherlock observed. He latched his fingers together, "Please, be honest."

Donovan tore open the envelope and pulled out a piece of notebook paper. "I do enjoy working with John. He's a brilliant detective and he somehow manages to unravel even the most ridiculous and complicated cases." She looked up to fix him with what would be an intensely fierce look if he weren’t accustomed to worse. "So you should be very grateful you're getting a chance to work with him and us."

Sherlock had a very firm suspicion Detective Watson and the precinct chief, as well as Watson's team, had been given very little choice in the matter. It had felt too easy for him to be allowed on this case. Especially since he was only a moderately well known mystery author with little political weight. He did, unfortunately, know someone who could have organized this on his behalf.

Sherlock said to Donovan, "I should be, so obviously I am." He spread his hands as a type of peace offering. If anything this case would give him ample opportunity to observe and watch this close-knit team. And also see how the case unfurled itself.

Donovan nodded at his response, reassured that he'd been warned. She proceeded to slowly begin reading her letter. 

Sherlock decided it wasn't worth trying to coax any more information out of her; at least not at the moment. So he decided to focus entirely on reading and sorting his fan letters. Hopefully this wouldn't be an empty effort.

~~~  
John quickly left the room Holmes and Sally were using, closing the door on the tense atmosphere behind him. He hoped he hadn't made an awful mistake leaving the two of them alone in a room together. Neither had any physical weapons, thankfully, but John suspected both of them were well versed in using words as weapons.

In the conference room next-door Clara was continuing to look over the files. John watched her through the window in the door. She was sitting on the far side of the table, her elbows propped on the surface and her hands pressed against the sides of her head. He could just see her lips moving as she read and saw an ear bud cord dangling from her ear. It was her typical routine for reading through evidence or trying to work through a complicated problem.

John watched this all with fond amusement; he really did like working with Clara. Then he twisted the doorknob and pushed open the door, stepping inside.

Clara looked up from her intense focus on the stack of papers in front of her. Her startled look faded into a bright smile as she recognized him. 

"Hey boss, have you finally come to join the fun?" Clara asked him, tugging out the ear bud.

John smiled back at her as he pushed the door closed and leaned back against it. "I suppose I have, yes."

Her smile quickly vanished as she blinked at him, brow furrowing in confusion. "Are you alright, John?"

"Yeah, fine," John agreed with a jerky nod. He looked down at the floor, blinking rapidly. When John finally managed to look back at her again he added, "I'm absolutely fine."

Clara continued frowning worriedly at him. "I don't think you really are," she stated simply. 

Clara waited several seconds and then glanced at the window that looked in on the next room; they could have seen Holmes and Sally if the blinds weren't closed. "Is it about him?"

John shook his head with a grim smile. "It's not always about him, Clara. He isn't the only troubling thing we have around here."

Clara must have heard something in his voice he hadn't meant for her to hear, because she grinned at him and leaned forward. "It is though, isn't it?" Clara said eagerly. "Come on, what did he do now?"

John rubbed a hand over his face and slowly walked over to the table. "He didn't do anything, Clara. I just," he crossed his arms across his chest. “I can’t figure him out. You’ve seen him, he doesn’t fit any label. He’s…”

He trailed off trying to find the right word, any word, to explain. Clara started smiling at him in a way that was more of a smirk. “Finally found a riddle you can’t solve, a patient you can’t diagnose?”

Clara was one of the few people who knew of the old habits he’d carried over from his abruptly cut short time as a doctor. One was his tendency to try and diagnose people, especially suspects. Reasoning was important to him; but at the same time he enjoyed riddles, or problems that weren’t what they seemed and couldn’t be solved by a typical answer. And Holmes, Sherlock, was turning out to be just that.

John realized he hadn’t answered Clara, or spoken, for a few minutes. He looked across the table at her, only to find Clara was smiling smugly as she tapped her fingers together.

“What?” John asked, an edge to his voice though he hadn’t meant to. But it didn’t seem to have bothered her.

“You do like him, you’re just not letting yourself admit it.” Her eyes gleamed once John opened his mouth to argue. “No, don’t. You haven’t seen the two of you together. And,” Clara glanced towards the other conference room. “I’m fairly sure he’s pushing you just because you’re letting him.”

“I’m not letting him!” John protested loudly. After a long pause he sighed and finally dropped into the chair next to him. “He just does this thing where he looks at you and... unravels you. It’s unnerving but it’s also… brilliant.”

Clara snickered, shaking her head slowly back and forth. “You’re just making it worse John. So go on, what happened? Did he do that to you?”

John sat back in the chair, crossing his legs. “He figured out I was a doctor, back in London. Apparently our conversation with Sarah was telling enough for him to put it all together. And then he wouldn’t leave it, he had to dig deeper.”

The smile slowly slipped from Clara’s face, her brow wrinkling. “John, you know you can just tell him to stop. He’s only a consultant; you don’t have to stand for that. Your life in London isn’t important to what you’re doing now.” She reached her hand out across the table, pressing her palm into the wood. “Don’t let him get to you, John. Let’s solve this case instead.”

John nodded jerkily, but pushed himself upright again in his chair. “All right.” He reached out and pulled a stack of the files over to his side of the table. Once they were in front of him John took the top file and opened it.

After he read the first page and saw this file was for a man who’d gone to their victim with allegations of tax fraud and evasion, John decided it would be best to settle in for the long haul.

Once they had sat in silence for several minutes paging through the files, Clara scoffed quietly and commented, “Our victim wasn’t a very nice man, was he?”

“He also wasn’t a very good lawyer, it looks like,” John added as he flipped quickly through the last few pages in the file. “Or at least not a very efficient one.”

Clara closed the file she’d been reading and set it on top of a smaller stack of files to her left. “Well, he still had at least a few satisfied customers,” she said, indicating that stack with a wave of her hand.

“Add another file to the satisfied client with no motive pile,” John told her, handing across the file he’d just finished reading.

As she took it from him and placed the file on the appropriate pile, Clara said, “Sally probably told you, but we did find the client whose name matched the last appointment in his calendar a few days before he died. She said she would try to get a hold of them and ask them to come in, but I don’t know if she had any luck so far.”

“She didn’t mention it to me if she did talk to them,” John commented, taking the next file and opening it. “So I don’t imagine she found them. What about the mysterious recurring client we only have initials for?”

Clara slowly shook her head. “No luck yet, sadly. But we do have all of these detailed files to go through still,” she reminded him, pointing at the multiple piles in the middle of the table and then at the evidence bins on the floor that contained even more files. “We’ll find them in here somewhere.”

“Of course we will,” he agreed confidently. John turned to study the three piles of files Clara had started building on the table between them. “Just so I don’t mess up your system, what are these piles exactly?”

“Oh, so you can learn,” Clara exclaimed, sounding surprised as she mock-widened her eyes. “Good to know.” When John just looked at her Clara laughed and explained, pointing at each pile in turn, “Three piles, three categories. Probably innocent, no motive. Possible suspect, some motive. Suspect, definite motive.”

There were noticeably significantly more files in the first pile than the others. But that was typical with these kinds of cases. Every lead they discovered ended up going nowhere until they finally uncovered the right one.

“Thanks, I’ll do my best to follow that,” John said sincerely. He leaned forward and started reading the file.

The first one of many.  
~~~

In the other conference room Sherlock was reading yet another letter written by one of his more numerous than he’d expected fans. 

This letter landed in the category of a correspondence full of adoration of his writing, remarking on how amazing his stories were and how the fan never saw the reveal coming. Neither which was very surprising since he prided himself on his inventive plots and above average reasoning ability.

The letter also contained no hint of its author wanting to recreate the crimes in Sherlock’s novels, or of any murderous or criminal tendencies. Exactly the same as the rest of the letters Sherlock had read so far.

So he put the letter aside and picked another out of the mail bin. There was a ridiculous amount of them and reading each one was proving to be tedious. Other authors may enjoy reading correspondences and hearing feedback from their adoring fans, but Sherlock was not one of them. He didn’t care about any of that. Yes, he was glad people enjoyed his writing, but he wasn’t grateful and didn’t depend on them to influence his novels.

“Your fans really do think pretty highly of you, don’t they?” Donovan commented delightedly from where she sat across the table. “Must help to inflate your ego,” she added with a quick glance at him.

Sherlock didn’t bother responding. No one should take any word written or said by a fan as truth. Instead he opened the envelope he was holding and pulled out the letter inside.

This one was on cream-colored stationery matching the envelope it had come in. It wasn’t handwritten like the others but typed instead, more likely on a typewriter of some sort than a computer given how the letters felt raised when he ran his finger over them. The only strange part was the handwritten signature at the bottom of the page in blue felt pen. In fact it wasn’t actually a signature, just a single cursive capital ‘M.’

This letter was extremely intriguing at first glance, even without reading the actual contents. It was obviously different from the other more typical fan letters he’d just spent ages reading.

Sherlock started reading from the beginning of the letter, slowly and carefully working his way through it. By the end of the first paragraph he had jerked upright and started taking intent notice. The second paragraph was even more alarming, and Sherlock fought the urge to stand up and start pacing as he continued to read. The last paragraph, overly friendly and promising more for the future, caused a real warning.

As soon as he finished reading Sherlock set the letter down and picked up the envelope to inspect it. It was a standard letter envelope, cream colored, with his name and the address of his publishing firm typed on the front. There was an unremarkable postage stamp, and a return address of the same cursive ‘M.’ Sherlock looked at the postmark for a date. It was dated a year and several months ago, so it was unlikely they’d have any luck following up on it.

Yet seeing as ‘M,’ or the person who had written it, promised more to come, it was very likely there were more letters.

Sherlock stood up and moved to in front of the mail bin. He reached in and took a handful of letters then carefully went through them one by one, paying close attention to the address and postmark.

Molly seemed to have organized them by date, or at least by year to some extent. So Sherlock looked for any letters from around the same date, grateful Molly had made the task at least a little easier.

The first several handfuls of letters yielded no results. They were from the same time period but the addresses were either handwritten or not from a ‘M.’ He quickly set those aside on the table and took more letters.

Finally when he was nearly to the bottom of the bin Sherlock found another envelope with a typed address and only ‘M’ used as the sender.

This one was dated from several months ago, nearly a year after the first letter Sherlock had found. It also appeared identical to the first.

Sherlock carefully tore it open and tossed the envelope on the table before unfolding the letter. It was typed with raised letters and on the same stiff cream-colored paper. This letter began, ‘My dear Sherlock…”

After the greeting the letter quickly spiraled downward. The writer bemoaned how Sherlock hadn’t answered and wondered if Sherlock had really understood the sentiment behind his last letter. He wondered if Sherlock had a reason for making him wait, if he was actually writing another novel or if Sherlock had given up on it all. Then he went on about how creative Sherlock’s writing was and how inventive his plots were, and why weren’t criminals in the real world like that? Why was it always so easy for them to be caught? Why was the perfect crime so impossible to commit? All though, wouldn’t it be interesting to try?

After that last question there was some kind of winking face drawn. The writer’s final promise was that there would be murders worthy of Sherlock’s writing.

If Sherlock hadn’t already disliked mail from his fans this would have definitely put him off it. There would always be fans that became obsessed with what wasn’t real, yet for some reason couldn’t seem to comprehend that. And this person seemed to be the worst of all of them.

The letter was signed ‘M,’ like the first. And now Sherlock wanted more than anything to know who this ‘M’ was.

He set the envelope and letter aside with the first and continued looking through the last remaining letters in the bin. There was only a handful left, but they were more of the typical fan letters that Sherlock didn’t bother reading. None of them were from ‘M.’

Once he finished putting the useless letters back into the bin, Sherlock paused staring down at them as he considered what to do next. These two alarming, threatening letters were enough to start to investigate for sure, but it was also possible there were more letters. Ones that held more helpful clues.

A voice suddenly filtered into his thoughts, and Sherlock jerked his head up.

“Hey, Holmes! Holmes! Are you alright?” Donovan called, sounding a mixture of annoyed and worried.

He looked across the table to find she was now standing, poised against the edge of the table, and staring at him.

“Perfectly fine, detective. I was only thinking,” Sherlock replied as calmly and non-condescendingly as possible, offering a weak smile.

She looked slightly less worried but remained standing, leaning forward. “What were you thinking so hard about?”

“Have you come across any letters from someone who signs them only as ‘M’?” He asked, not quite keeping the urgency from his voice if the sudden frown on the detective’s face was any indication. “They are typed, and have no return address.”

“No, definitely not,” Donovan replied confidently, shaking her head. “I haven’t seen any that gave me the same reaction as the ones you read did.” She poked at a stack of letters sitting on the table in front of her. “Just the typical gushing, over emotional rambling.”

“These are drastically different,” Sherlock informed her. He picked up one of the letters from ‘M’ and handed it across to Donovan. “You can see for yourself, this is no typical fan.”

There was still the last bin of letters Watson had brought in that they hadn’t touched. Sherlock walked over to it at the end of the table and started sorting through the letters inside.

He had gone through the first handful of letters without finding any more from ‘M’ when Donovan demanded sharply, “Did you read this?”

Sherlock glanced briefly over at her then returned his focus to the letters. “Obviously, or I wouldn’t be sharing that specific one with you. As you can see it stands out sharply from all the more typical rambling fan letters.”

Donovan shook the letter around in the air. “This is completely disturbing, how do you even get fans like this?” Her mouth pursed with disgust.

“It isn’t as if I go out of my way to attract them,” Sherlock answered sharply, inspecting another batch of letters. “I spend very little time paying any sort of attention to my fans.”

“Well this is definitely creepy,” Donovan declared, and stepped back from the table. “We need to show this to John.”

“We should see if there are any others before we go running to Watson.” Sherlock interrupted, setting aside another handful of useless letters. These ones seemed to be from nearly two years ago, just after Molly had first realized it was not a good idea at all to let him correspond or interact with his fans. So maybe ‘M’ started writing to him even earlier than Sherlock had suspected.

“You’ve found more from this psycho?” Donovan asked incredulously, setting the letter back on the table. “Let me see them,” she said, reaching out a hand.

Sherlock sighed, considering walking back to where he’d left the other letter he’d found, but quickly dismissed the idea. “I left it there, you can read it for yourself,” he said, pointing at it.

Donovan didn’t quite hide rolling her eyes. But she did walk around the table to pick up the letter in question.

As she read the letter Sherlock quickly went through the rest of the envelopes in the mail bin. At first he decided there must not be any others from ‘M’ after all. But then with the last few letters at the very bottom he saw a familiar cream envelope.

Sherlock picked it up and waved the envelope at Donovan. “Detective.”

“Mm?” She replied, still rapidly scanning the letter and looking more and more alarmed.

Having no patience to wait Sherlock tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter. 

The postmark on the envelope was dated just a few months after his first novel had been published, back when he was still considered an up and coming crime novelist. It was again addressed to his publishing company, the public address given on the website.

Sherlock unfolded the letter and began to read. This could be considered the most ordinary of the three letters, but there was still an unnerving tone to it. ‘M’ wrote like Sherlock was already a friend of his, gushing about how amazing and inspiring his writing was, that it was unlike all the other boring drivel in the genre, and how different the world would be if criminals really were like the ones in Sherlock’s novels.

It was mostly all sentiment he had shared in the other letters, and described what had driven Sherlock to write in the first place. But knowing what was in ‘M’s later letters, Sherlock still found it unnerving. At least this letter didn’t mention wanting to recreate crimes from his novels. Yet.

“God, what a nutter,” Donovan said, sounding completely disgusted. She tossed the letter back onto the table as if she couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. “How come you didn’t notice this weirdo earlier? It sounds like he’s been working up to this for over a year.” She looked at him intently. “This is a very good example for why you should regularly read your mail.”

“Take that up with my publicist,” Sherlock replied, picking up the envelope. “Here,” he said, holding out the letter and envelope. “There was one more after all.”

She grabbed it from him and began reading through it. As she did Sherlock checked the last dozen or so envelopes he hadn’t looked at yet, but they were all ordinary.

“Well, he started off more of a… typical fan… at least,” Donovan observed, still looking over the letter. “If a bit dramatic. Is this the last one?”

Sherlock dumped the rest of the letters back in the bin and straightened. “If you didn’t find any then no. These are the only ones.”

“All right,” Donovan nodded. She gathered the three letters and their envelopes together then turned on her heel. “We need to show these to John.”

He watched her stride determinedly towards the door, on her way to see the detective. Before she could open the door, Sherlock called, “Wouldn’t it be better to finish opening the rest of the letters?”

The detective didn’t even pause; she pulled open the door and walked through. “This is a very important lead we need to follow up on. We’ll be lucky if the person who wrote these is even still in the city. The last letter is months old.”

Sherlock hurried to follow her, since she obviously wouldn’t wait for him.

Donovan finally paused on the other side of the doorway, turning around to him. “Well, come on then.”

He quickened his pace to finally catch up with her before she could pull the door closed on him. Watson, and the other detective on the team- Clara? - were only in the next room it seemed, so it was just seconds before Donovan opened the door to the other room.

Watson was sitting nearest to them with his back to the door. He was reclining in his chair, with a file spread open on his lap. The other detective sat on the other side of the table, propped up on her elbows and intently studying the file she was reading.

Donovan stormed into the room, throwing open the door rather dramatically. The other detective jerked her head upward at the noise before greeting Donovan with a bright smile. It faded slightly as her gaze drifted to Sherlock.

“Hello,” the detective, Clara, greeted cheerfully. She tilted her head slightly as she asked, “What’s the hurry? You two look worried.”

Watson finally raised his head at Clara’s greeting and turned sideways in his chair to see them. His forehead furrowed slightly as he took them in. A moment later he asked, looking more interested, “What did you find?”

Donovan walked briskly over to his chair and held out the letters. “Our pet novelist and I found these letters in with the rest of his fan mail.” She glanced behind her at Sherlock. “Well, actually, he found them all first.”

Sherlock recognized this acknowledgement with a faint nod. Though he didn’t much appreciate being called their ‘pet novelist.’ He wasn’t anyone’s pet, especially since he was in fact a consultant and an unpaid one to boot.

Instead of saying this out loud, as much as he wanted to since Donovan was beginning to irritate him, Sherlock cleared his throat. “There are three letters, sent at an unequal time apart from each other according to the postmarks. All of them are typewritten with only a hand signed ‘M’ for a signature. A man, young, overconfident and eager to impress, likely wrote them. He is more focused on me than my writing, though he does go on for a while about how much he adores my stories.”

Watson had turned to look directly at him, giving Sherlock his full attention. It was not alarming... but strange. Most people stopped paying attention to him or ignored him after the first minute. 

“What else can you tell from them?” Watson asked, eager and curious instead of the typical hostile response.

Sherlock thought carefully about his answer, putting all the facts in order first. Then he began to explain. “This person isn’t actively seeking attention, or that isn’t the reason he wrote the first letter. The dates correspond to just after a novel of mine was published. Or the first two letters do. The last is more recent, posted only several months ago. And,” he considered the letters Watson was still holding. “The most recent letter is also where he begins to hint at his more criminally inclined tendencies. He explicitly mentions how interesting it would be if criminals in real life were as creative as the ones in my novels.”

The detective ‘hmph’ed and twisted around in his seat, focusing on the letters in his hand. “That doesn’t sound like something people usually write about in fan letters.”

“I can only speak from my experience of the last hour of painful reading through several hundreds of letters,” Sherlock explained, mouth twitching a little. “It was not a common feature though, no.”

“That’s a relief,” Watson noted, starting to read over the letters. “Otherwise I would be worried for my job. And the current class of criminals.”

“We should worry only about the specific person who wrote these letters,” Sherlock corrected, but not as harshly as he would to someone else. “If he is a criminal, which from the tone of his letters seems likely.”

“True,” Watson agreed. He finished the first letter and switched to the next one.

“I’d say he definitely is a criminal. He writes about killing people, and doing it in creative ways. What other kind of person would do something like that?” Donovan pointed out fiercely, crossing her arms. Her gaze glanced to Sherlock so quickly he nearly missed it.

“Seriously? Let me see those,” the other detective, Clara, said, sounding very interested. She quickly stood from her chair and walked around the table to stand next to Watson and read over his shoulder.

“That is just one very alarming part of these letters,” Watson told her, starting to look even more worried. He finished the letter and handed it up to Clara.

Instead of continuing on to the last letter, Watson looked over at Sherlock who moved slightly forward, closer to him. Watson smiled and said, “I would ask if you noticed anyone strange or out of place at events you’ve gone to or even just day to day. But since you’re well known for not having any events or press, I can’t think of a reason to ask.”

“There is always a reason, detective. You just need to find the right questions to get the answers you want,” Sherlock advised. “And in answer to your unasked question, no, I haven’t noticed anyone strange or unusual following me. Either in public or around my apartment. However I don’t believe the man who wrote the letters would engage in something as plebeian as stalking. He sees himself as above, superior, to the common people. These letters are him whetting his appetite, proving himself to me. He’ll stay in the shadows, not step out to watch me.”

“Sounds a little like you associate with him,” Donovan commented nearby, just loud enough to be overheard. “The way you’re talking about him.”

“Sally!” Clara hissed scolding, glaring over Watson’s head at the other woman.

Watson’s mouth thinned out in a way that made it obvious he’d heard but refused to get involved. “So you think these letters, especially the last one, is just the beginning?” He asked Sherlock, shifting in his chair.

Sherlock nodded his agreement. “I believe so, yes.”

“So, the last letter was sent a few months ago before our murder happened,” Clara broke in, theorizing out loud. She slowly sat on the arm of Watson’s chair as she continued, “Does that mean he was trying to warn us? But when no one read the letter he actually went out and killed someone to prove his point?”

“No, that’s not it,” Watson disagreed shaking his head, denying it before Sherlock could. “It wasn’t to get back at us, or at Holmes, for not listening. He wants our attention, and to prove he’s better.”

“I also feel he isn’t the type to commit such a thing as murder himself,” Sherlock contributed, trying to treat the man like his own character. “He would instead force someone to do it on his behalf. Cleverer that way.”

Clara’s face fell, her shoulders dropping. “So you’re saying we’re looking for two people now? The person who actually committed the murder and the one who wrote the letters and made someone else do it?” She sighed heavily. “This case just keeps getting more and more complicated.”

“There was one more thing we noticed,” Donovan offered, moving closer to point at the letters. “The initial ‘M’ as a return address is only on the most recent two letters. The first letter he sent had an actual building address on it. We just have to look it up.”

Watson moved the envelopes to look at them closely. “That’s strange, why don’t the most recent ones have a real return address?”

“It was his first letter, he sent it out without any expectations. There was no need to hide his return address because he didn’t expect a reply or that he’d need to hide it.” Sherlock explained his own personal theory. “The second and third letters, specifically, were sent for a different and more malicious purpose.”

“Hmm,” Watson hummed before putting two of the letters back into their envelopes and setting them on the table. The first letter he put in its envelope and dropped it in his jacket pocket.

“Well, it’s a place to start,” the detective said, standing up from his chair. “Let’s get going.”

“Going? What do you mean by going?” Clara asked, hopping to her feet. Facing them all she added, “Where are we off to?”

Watson paused in moving towards the door and looked over to her, hands curled in his pockets. “I am off to find this address and see who lives there and hopefully who sent the letters.” He lifted his chin. “Hopefully this address will give us more answers.”

While he was talking Clara started shaking her head. “No, you’re not. I mean, you’re not going alone.” She crossed her arms forbiddingly. “What happens if the psycho who wrote these letters is still there? Maybe they’re just waiting for someone to show up and ask about them.”

“After this long?” Donovan asked skeptically.

Watson laughed quietly, looking amused. “You watch too many movies and television, Clara. It doesn’t really work like that.”

“It could!” Clara protested, but didn’t sound as convinced.

“He won’t be there, Clara, and he won’t be waiting in the shadows for us either. Whoever this is doesn’t know that we know about him now. And anyway, you know I can defend myself if I need to.” Watson reassured her calmly.

“Really boss, you’re just going to go charging in there?” Donovan asked, trying to make Watson understand how horrible of an idea she thought this was. After a pause she added, “With absolutely no backup with you and us just on call in case something does happen?”

Watson frowned; lines forming that gave away how often he made that expression. “Do you think I’ve really never been in a similar situation before, Sally? I’ll be fine. Nothing will happen. I’m just searching the building.”

“Yes, because criminals who’ve sent threatening letters just love being taken by surprise,” Clara joined in. “Almost as much as us regular people do. Especially surprise parties, those are always a hit. I remember how much you loved yours.”

Donovan snickered gleefully.

Sherlock was almost certain Watson was blushing in embarrassment as he glanced quickly over to him. 

Watson cleared his throat and said, “Thank you, Clara. I’ll go investigate this address now.”

Donovan followed as he walked towards the door. “Well, if you’re not letting Clara go with you, at least let me come. Not just to protect you from crazed, murderous fans but also for, you know, questioning anyone you might find.”

At the door Watson turned, one hand on the doorknob, to look at her. “Sally, I really don’t need help with this. I’ll be fine. I have questioned people before since I am, you know, a detective.”

He turned the knob and pushed the door open a little. “You three stay here and keep looking through the files. Clara, if you could look at that coded note again, I know you’ll crack it.” Watson looked directly over at Sherlock. “Maybe Holmes can help you. He’s designed codes and ciphers on his own before.”

Clara looked skeptically over at Sherlock, her lips pressed together in a line. “I don’t know… sometimes two heads aren’t better than one.”

“You’re welcome to it, I work better on my own.” Sherlock replied calmly, dismissing the idea completely. He turned to look at Watson instead, “I would like to go with you instead. I want to see what you find and listen to what people tell you myself.”

Watson’s expression clearly told him that would be a very bad idea. His mouth twisted as he took a step through the doorway. “That is not going to happen. But I will call and give all of you an update as soon as I’m finished.”

As if Sherlock would ever accept that. He had even asked nicely. “That won’t be good enough. I need to hear and see everything in person. What the people say, what you find inside the building, where he wrote the letters, everything.” Sherlock explained firmly, hearing a sharpness building in his voice. He wanted the detective to at least try to understand. “Otherwise I won’t be able to properly deduce and interpret all the information and evidence you find.”

Watson sighed and replied, “You don’t have to worry about all of that. I’m only going to find what evidence I can, and if there’s anyone there I’ll talk to them. When I come back I’ll have everything second hand for you to look over. So, you’ll just have to wait.”

“There’s also the pretty important fact you seem to be forgetting that you’re not actually part of the police,” Donovan reminded Sherlock, as if he needed to be reminded yet again. “You’re a consultant, and not even one we asked for. You aren’t qualified to go out investigating with us. Your role here is to stay inside the precinct and let us do our work. When we want your opinion or ideas, we’ll ask. That’s it.”

“Sally,” Clara warned softly. Sherlock glanced over to see she was looking back and forth between Watson and Donovan, biting her lip.

Donovan frowned, crossing her arms, but she stopped talking to stare at the floor instead.

Sherlock refused to let this lie just yet. He was more than just a consultant; he had a lot more to offer than what Donovan was describing. “I may not be a police officer, no. But I do know about crime, murder, and motive. I am here to help you, to take an active role in the investigation. Not to be called only when you need my knowledge and experience. I may not be as qualified as you are, but you can trust me to hold my own and play just as equal a role as the rest of you.”

Sherlock turned to give Detective Watson an encouraging look, wishing the man were capable of mind reading or was easier to influence. “I can be helpful to you with this. I may not particularly like people but I am talented at reading and deducing. The people at this address may not all be criminals. Except if you do find the man we’re looking for. But I can help you to ask the right questions and look in the right places so you get the answers you want. It can only help to further our investigation.”

Watson, thankfully, looked like he was finally considering the idea. Or at the very least he hadn’t already left. After several seconds of just regarding him Watson finally asked, “Do you have experience questioning people? And by people I mean suspects or witnesses in investigations, not regular citizens.”

Sherlock briefly cast his mind back to those years in London, before his brother had pressured him to move to this city. Years when he hadn’t been allowed to follow the path he wanted, despite finally finding something he could do, something he was good at. “Some,” he answered being purposefully vague. “All though not at all of it was police approved.”

Irritatingly Sherlock couldn’t tell exactly what the man was thinking, although there was some hint of amusement in his expression now. 

“Interesting,” Watson said calmly. “And if a… problem or incident happened…” He raised a hand to ward off Clara and Donovan’s protests, continuing to hold Sherlock’s gaze. “Not that I think it would, but I need to know you’ll have my back and won’t do anything completely reckless instead.”

Clara audibly laughed at this. “No, boss, you’re the one who’s always reckless and has no regard for their own safety.”

“I am not. And it’s our job as officers to keep people safe and uphold the peace. We took an oath to,” Watson reminded her, his jaw visibly clenched. “He,” pointing to Sherlock now, “is also a civilian. But as long as he’s helping us with this investigation we need to consider him in our protection, and respect him like another officer.”

“Does that mean you’ll be giving me a weapon?” Sherlock asked curiously, surprised by Watson’s support. Most officers he had experience working with had barely tolerated his presence.

The detective huffed in amusement, possibly fighting a smile. “God, no. You’ll have to find another way to protect yourself. But if I do let you come with you have to promise to listen and do exactly as I tell you. No running off on your own or doing anything that would put either of us in danger. I am personally responsible for you.”

Sherlock silently reflected that Watson really didn’t know him well enough yet to ask that of him. “I will try,” he replied instead, avoiding actually promising. “I hope you’ll at least give me some way to protect myself.”

Watson finally smiled at him, almost grinning. “I think we can find something,” he said thoughtfully.

“You’d better give him something, John, or Greg will call you into his office and remind you of the precinct expectations,” Clara advised with a strange look in her eyes. “Especially when it comes to consultants.”

Detective Watson took another step into the hall, half-leaning against the doorway. “We’ll be fine, Clara, don’t worry,” he reassured her confidently. 

Watson turned to Sherlock. “Come on, then,” he invited, tilting his head towards the main room. “Let’s go.”

Sherlock quickly moved to join the detective before the man had a chance to change his mind. He didn’t want to lose this opportunity, not when it was so early on. Detective Watson might be his one chance to do what he truly wanted, more than being a writer. And Watson did seem willing to let him be an active participant in the investigation.

Sherlock stepped through the doorway and stopped just out in the hall when the detective didn’t follow. He turned around, waiting impatiently for Watson to finish whatever he was doing.

He listened as Watson said to his fellow officers, “Keep working on that coded note, and the client files. I’ll call as soon as we’re done and tell you what we found.” Footsteps started moving slowly in his direction. “Wait by your phones, all right?”

“Call right away if you need back up,” Donovan instructed,insistent. “Don’t you dare try and go off on your own, or do anything reckless. Call first.”

“Of course I will,” Watson agreed waving a hand. “Don’t worry Sally, I’ll let you know first.”

He finally stepped fully into the hallway, pulling the door closed. Once it shut with a quiet click Watson sighed and dropped his head, as if his neck couldn’t hold it up anymore.

Sherlock debated whether or not to ask; but then Watson raised his head again and treated him to a tight, tired smile.

“Come on then, we’ll take my car in the lot,” Watson said, as they started moving in the direction of his desk. “Bring anything you may need, we might not be coming back right away. The car will be safe enough to leave your things in.”

“You have the envelope with the return address?” Sherlock asked as he followed after the detective. He always made a habit of traveling light, often carrying only his phone and wallet, but the reminder was welcome.

As they arrived back at Watson’s desk the detective patted a pocket of his jacket. “Right here, don’t worry,” Watson told him with a smile. “The only problem might be finding our way there, and hopefully that won’t be so difficult.” He tugged his coat off the back of his desk chair and pulled it on.

“I’m not worrying,” Sherlock responded tersely. He gathered up his own coat from the chair at the end of Donovan’s desk and put it on quickly. “I just prefer to be prepared.”

“That’s not surprising,” Watson said in a low voice, probably meant for himself.

Sherlock fastened his coat and adjusted the scarf around his neck. He watched Watson gather all of his things before sighing impatiently, “Could we possibly leave before the end of the day?”

Watson stopped in the midst of opening his desk drawer. He turned his head to give Sherlock a slightly sideways look, an amused twist to his mouth. “We’ll get there well before dark, don’t be dramatic.”

Sherlock turned his head away, refusing to respond.

Behind them a door opened and a familiar voice called out, “Hey, Holmes!”

Sherlock turned around, looking towards the conference room. Donovan was standing in the doorway, looking solely at him.

“Yes, Donovan?” Sherlock inquired with forced politeness, not sure of what else she could want from him.

Before she answered Donovan glanced over at Watson. A few seconds later she looked to Sherlock again and said firmly, “Look after him. Watch his back.”

Hearing this, Watson replied, “Sally…”

“And make sure he doesn’t do anything reckless!” Clara’s voice called from inside the room behind Sally.

Donovan’s firm look faded into a triumphant smirk at Clara’s contribution. She quirked a look at Watson, as if to say, ‘see?’

Watson shook his head and nearly slammed the drawer closed. He clipped his police badge on his belt and slipped something into his coat pocket too quickly for Sherlock to see. 

“Come on then, let’s go,” Watson instructed nodding in the direction of the parking lot. “Before they try to offer any more ‘helpful’ advice.”

Sherlock followed the detective around his desk and down the hallway towards the parking lot. As Sherlock attempted to keep up when the man increased his pace, out of the corner of his eye he noticed Donovan move from the doorway and close the door behind her.

“Detective,” Sherlock began, but then paused at the look of concentration on the detective’s face. They were only going to investigate and search for information, yet from Watson’s expression they may as well be on their way to an interrogation.

Watson’s gaze drifted slowly over to him and he questioned absently, “Hmm?”

Sherlock shook his head, dismissing what he had been about to say. Instead he let himself be distracted by his tumultuous thoughts and consider all of the information they’d found so far.


	4. Chapter 4

John led Holmes towards the smaller parking lot on the side of the precinct. It was smaller and more out of the way than the main lot at the front of the building. Which was why fewer people used it and why John preferred it.

Luckily today was somewhat of a reprieve from the cooler weather so their walk across the parking lot, enclosed on three sides, wasn’t the arduous journey it could have been. 

John noticed Holmes was almost uncharacteristically silent during their journey to his car, but he didn’t comment on it. Holmes would start talking again when he wanted.

When they were near his car John pulled out his car keys and unlocked the car. He went towards the driver’s side and saw Holmes pause on the other side. John reached out and opened the door, and they both climbed inside. John started the car with a quiet hum, and pulled out of the parking space to start them on their way.

This drive wasn’t quite as tense as their last, all though it was still in silence. It lasted until they’d gone a block or so from the building and stopped at a red light.

John broke the silence first with a simple question. “What was the address of the building? I’d like to know I’m at least going in the right direction.” He kept his eyes on the road in front of them, tapping his fingers on the wheel.

Holmes glanced over in his direction, not even moving his head. John waited for him to ask for the envelope, or just take it from his pocket since even that wouldn’t be a surprise. But instead Holmes returned his attention out the window and a few seconds later rattled off a vaguely familiar address.

John looked over at Holmes, taking his eyes off the road for a few seconds. “You don’t have x-ray vision or something do you? Because otherwise I don’t understand how you could have possibly remembered that.”

He continued looking at Holmes just long enough to witness the completely bewildered look on the man’s face. “No, I don’t have x-ray vision, whatever that is. Why would anyone have that?”

John pressed his lips together to stop from laughing at the confusion in Holmes’ voice. “It’s, it’s where you can see through-” He waved his hand in a vague gesture. “You know what, never mind.”

They stopped at another red light and John took advantage of it to reach over, carefully avoiding Holmes’ personal space, and open the glove compartment. He reached in, pushing aside his extra set of handcuffs with keys, extra notebook, and the manual for the car, to pull out the GPS device he’d bought back when he’d started learning the confusing map of city streets. John pushed the power button on the side and watched the screen light up.

Of course then the stoplight changed so John had to sit upright again and resume driving. Instead of trying to program the device and drive at the same time, he handed it over to Holmes. “Here, program this with the address? It should find the fastest route. Supposedly it’s also easy to use, but…”

Holmes took the device from him and John heard it start to beep as Holmes began fussing with it.

John continued driving for several blocks. From the address Holmes had rattled off he knew they were in the right area, he just needed more specific directions.

“Anytime, Holmes,” John reminded the man a little impatiently, tapping his fingers again.

Holmes grumbled wordlessly under his breath before there was a loud worrying noise. John looked over at the source, foot pumping the brake.

From what he could see it looked like Holmes had been unsuccessful trying to program the device. So he had apparently carelessly tossed it back inside the glove compartment.

“Holmes, that was very expensive! You have to be careful with it,” John protested, reaching over to check how it was after its rough handling.

“It’s a useless device, how is anyone supposed to use it if the thing is impossible to program in the first place,” Holmes commented tetchily, sliding slightly down in his seat.

“Well,” John began, turning the device over. It seemed mostly unharmed. “That was going to help us find the address. Otherwise we’ll just drive around forever. So, please,” John stressed the last word, “try it again.”

Holmes huffed loudly but didn’t move from his slouched position. Instead he dug in his coat pocket and pulled out his phone. As John continued driving Holmes unlocked the device and started rapidly pressing the buttons.

John drove another block before his curiosity won out. “What are you doing?”

Holmes continued tapping at his phone while he answered, “Using a more helpful, dependable method of getting directions. Just give me a minute and I will have them for you.”

“All right,” John said nodding. He continued driving, waiting for Holmes’ instructions.

Finally Holmes spoke again, tapping one last time with a flourish. “This should help us successfully reach our destination. Your first direction is to turn left at the next intersection.”

“Thanks,” John replied and followed the instruction.

John followed more of Holmes’ precise directions, reading off whatever he was looking at on his phone.

John tried to start a conversation as they continued driving, “You mentioned this is near your publisher's office. Do you think that’s why the person chose this building? There could be a reason why they’re in this specific area.”

“If you want to believe our suspect has that level of intelligence, I suppose it is possible,” Holmes answered focus still entirely on his phone. But John noticed Holmes didn’t sound very sure. “Another, more likely reason is that this building happens to also be our suspect's actual residence. He used his real address the one time he wrote in a return address. The headquarters of my publisher’s being nearby is likely a coincidence.”

John hummed his agreement. “All right then. Hopefully the residents and evidence we find inside the building will give us more.”

“Unlikely, most ordinary people have the memory capabilities of a goldfish. We’ll be lucky if they can tell us any useful information.”

“That’s optimistic,” John observed cheerfully, pressing down on the gas pedal. “Cheer up.”

Holmes did not look cheered by this at all. Instead of continuing the conversation he refocused on his phone.

He did, thankfully, continue giving John directions. Several turns later Holmes spoke again. “How long have you been a detective?”

The personal question was so out of the blue that it took John a moment. “A few years, well around a decade really. If you count the years of training, the academy, and getting to where I am now.” After a pause he had to ask, “Why?”

Holmes shook his head then dropped his chin. “Merely curious. If you’ve been here that amount of time it’s understandable we haven’t met before. Or why I haven’t seen you before. I doubt there would have been a chance for us to meet.”

John frowned, not understanding what he meant. “I didn’t think you’d worked with the police before. Greg didn’t mention that you had any history with the NYPD.”

“Greg?” Holmes repeated, unfolding slightly from his curled position. “Ah, your… captain I suppose. He told you I was being brought in on the case this morning after you arrived.” He briefly turned his head to look at John. “No, your captain wouldn’t have told you about my history with the police because I have none. I only visited a police precinct here once.”

“Not as a suspect or while you were under arrest, I hope,” John joked weakly. He knew Greg wouldn’t even consider letting Holmes work with his team if the man had any criminal history. Greg was very careful with who he gave access to the precinct and to his detectives.

“No, not like that,” Holmes reassured confidingly. “I was hoping to…” He trailed off, suddenly silent and thoughtful. John waited patiently; familiar enough with the man by now to know it wouldn’t help to pressure Holmes into continuing.

They were close to the building now, only several blocks away from where they’d hopefully find answers to their quickly growing list of questions. If there were any answers to find.

Holmes abruptly started speaking again. “Back in London I had a kind of, arrangement, with the police. When they had any cases they were unable to solve, the police would consult me.”

John took advantage of the lack of traffic to glance over at Holmes, studying the man’s expression. He found it strange that even though this arrangement sounded intriguing, somehow Holmes didn’t sound as pleased about it as John would expect. “You must have been pretty successful at helping them close cases since police don’t consult amateurs.”

Holmes huffed dramatically, while still pretending to be busy with his phone. “I did manage to close numerous cases they were too blind or idiotic to solve on their own. However it turned out not to be as official an arrangement as I’d believed. It all ended in a somewhat colossal, public incident.”

Ah. “So you’d like to recreate the same arrangement with our precinct?” John questioned, merely curious. It was an interesting idea, and it was true Holmes had been helpful so far. “We can look into that, and I’ll put in a good word for you with Greg. Especially if we manage to close this case.”

“When, you mean when detective,” Holmes interjected smoothly. “When we solve this case.”

“Right,” John nodded in agreement. He looked out the window for any street signs or building numbers, since Holmes had apparently given up on his navigational duties. “I meant when.”

As they continued down the street, driving slowly now, John saw by the building numbers that they were nearly on the right street.

“You’re not… You don’t worry such an arrangement would eventually result in the same kind of public scandal?” Holmes asked quietly, his words lacking their usual confidence. He instead sounded a little confused, and also like he was possibly questioning John’s sanity.

“It’s possible,” John said reluctantly, refusing to completely agree with the idea. “But then again, anything is possible. This time it would be an official arrangement, and,” John looked over at Holmes, “You’d have all of us to watch you and keep you in line.”

Holmes’ mouth twisted in what John suspected was meant to be a smile. “How lucky for me.”

A building further along the next street proved to be the one they were looking for. It was a two-story brick townhouse with concrete front steps up to the door and shutters on all of the windows. It was a shining example of the typical buildings in this part of the city, except that it stood apart from the buildings on either side.

“This is our final destination,” John announced as he pulled to a stop on the opposite side of the street from the building. “We’re here.”

Holmes finally tore his eyes away from his phone to shift in his seat and look out the window at the building. “Is every single brownstone in this city an identical copy of each other?” He commented, hopefully a rhetorically question. “Weren’t the builders original at all?”

“I don’t think the architects and builders were especially worried about originality while they were in the middle of building,” John offered as he turned off the car. “Probably more interested in creating homes for people.”

Holmes made an unconvinced sound while opening the door. He climbed out of the car and stood staring at the building across the street.

John dropped the keys in his pocket and pushed the door. “They do change shades and materials, so at least some are different.”

“Not the same,” Holmes replied disdainfully, moving out of the way to push his door closed.

They quickly walked across the street and onto the pavement in front of the building. When Holmes stopped in the middle of the pavement to survey the building, John slid a hand into his pocket to press the button on his keys to lock the car.

“So this is the building then?” Holmes clarified, frowning a little for some reason. “It doesn’t look very much like the residence of a criminal, or a madman.”

“I’m sure you’ve learned in all your experience that appearances can be deceiving,” John said before crossing the pavement and walking up the stairs to the front door of the building.

He turned around on the front step when he realized Holmes hadn’t followed him. The other man was still standing on the pavement and frowning slightly, his eyes flickering over every inch of the building that looked, at first sight, completely ordinary.

After neither of them moved nor spoke for a few seconds, John finally called, “Holmes?”

“There’s something wrong,” Holmes stated plainly, like he was talking aloud to himself. “Something is off about this building. I just can’t…”

John walked back down the steps and across to Holmes. Then, although he wasn’t a big fan of touching, John wrapped a hand around Holmes’ arm and led the man towards the front steps.

“Come on, hopefully there’s a directory or something by the door,” John said optimistically, firmly yet gently leading Holmes along. They walked up the steps together before stopping at the top.

The door was wooden with a window that he could see a second gated glass door through. Which meant it wouldn’t be as easy to get in without a key or someone letting them in as John had hoped. He reached out and tried to turn the doorknob just in case it had been left open. Unfortunately the door stayed closed no matter how hard he turned or pulled.

“I should mention to you I haven’t practiced using my lock picks in a while,” Holmes informed him, sounding like he found this regretful.

John turned a little to just look at the man. “You do realize you just admitted you’ve used lock picks before, to a cop?”

Holmes raised a skeptical eyebrow at John’s question. “Are you going to arrest me, officer?”

John pretended to consider the question before he finally decided, “As long as you don’t tell me where or when, no.”

Holmes tilted his head slightly in acknowledgment of this, smiling a little. “Go on then.”

Looking at Holmes, John noticed a panel by the side of the door over Holmes’ shoulder. Just as he’d suspected it was a directory for the tenants in the building, with three panels and a warn off-white button for each.

“Ah,” John breathed taking a step forward. He brushed close to Holmes as he leaned in to study the directory. There were three panels for residents’ names but only one had writing on it, difficult to read since it was faded and a little smudged. The other panels didn’t have names and looked like the last words had been poorly erased. None of them looked touched in at least a year.

Holmes struggled to turn around in the small space, trying to see what John was looking at. His face cleared when he saw the directory and he hummed quietly. “It seems you were right.”

“Of course I was,” John rejoined, squinting a little at the nearly illegible writing on the one slot. “What does this look like to you? I think I can make out a ‘I’ and a ‘M.’”

“Obviously you need to improve your deciphering skills,” Holmes scolded, leaning in very close to look over John’s shoulder. After a pause he declared, “That would be a ‘J’ and a ‘M.’” Holmes smiled sharply. “I believe we’ve found the home of our mad fan letter writer.”

“You’ve decided that just from a ‘J’ and a ‘M’?” John asked, feeling a little skeptical but also only slightly awed. “Thousands of people probably have those same initials.”

“Yes,” Holmes drawled slowly, starting to sound dryly irritated. “But it’s very unlikely one person with those same initials just happens to be listed as a resident on the same building as the return address we found on the threatening letters.” He looked questioningly at John. “Don’t you think?”

“Yes, you’re right,” John agreed with a slight bob of his head. He ran a hand over his face then reached out to press the button next to the initials of ‘J’ ‘M.’

The buzzer sounded, probably echoing somewhere inside the building. But no one answered after a few seconds so John released the button and waited. And waited.

“No one seems to be home,” Holmes observed. He looked up at the building above them. “Which leads me to wonder if anyone does in fact live here.”

John blinked and turned sharply to Holmes. “You think no one actually lives here, that maybe the person who wrote the letters was just using it as a bogey drop?” He mused over the idea. “That’s devious.”

“Possibly.” Holmes agreed, dipping his chin. “Yet the proof is here before us.”

Instead of answering Holmes or commenting on the likelihood of that assumption, John reached out and pressed the button for ‘J’ ‘M’ again.

He pushed it in several short bursts then waited. He was being optimistic, but it was possible that ‘J’ M’, just wasn’t near the intercom.

Then seconds turned into a minute, then more, and John realized it was starting to look like Holmes was right.

So ‘J’ ‘M’ wasn’t home. Or he was ignoring the intercom for whatever reason. Which meant further investigation.

The other names on the directory were mostly smudged and faded. Either someone had attempted to erase them because those people didn’t live here any longer, or for more sinister reasons.

John tried pressing the buttons on the directory for the other residents, buzzing them several times. But there was no answer from them either.

“Well, looks like you were right,” John finally admitted, turning towards Holmes. But he stopped short as he realized Holmes wasn’t standing next to him any longer.

“Holmes?”

The man wasn’t anywhere in sight, not on the front steps or anywhere along the pavement up and down the street. He was very decidedly not there anymore.

John sighed, fighting the temptation to bang his head against the door. Instead he vigorously rubbed his forehead. Where the hell had the man gone? And why hadn’t John thought ahead to get his cell number? Or tag him with some kind of tracking device.

~~~

While John was wondering where his consulting author had gotten to, Sherlock was in the middle of climbing up the fire escape ladder he’d found at the back of the building.

It had taken something of a jump, but not enough to strain himself. With his shorter stature Watson would have never reached the bottom of the ladder even by jumping. Even slipping through the alley along the side of the building had not been the most pleasant experience. 

The metal ladder hadn’t been used recently, it rattled and made a loud protesting noise as he pulled it down. He climbed up it, and with a loud metal clang arrived on the platform for the first floor. It wasn’t very large; perhaps enough room for two people at most. But it held together under him and Sherlock was more interested in the window anyway.

It was one complete pane, double hung, with a wood frame that had seen better days after being exposed to the elements. The wood was slightly damp, and after a little picking came away easily under his fingers. Yet when he tried to push the window open it wouldn’t move at all.

Sherlock dropped his hands away from the window and paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. He wasn’t very used to physical exertion, or entering buildings by ways other than the door. At least he hadn’t done so in several years. Running around after Ellie and keeping her busy was an entirely different matter.

He rubbed his hands together and stepped up to the window again. Sherlock bent down, gripped the frame, and tried pushing again.

This time it went fairly easily, rattling as it moved upward along the tracks. He pushed it up just far enough for him to fit through and duck inside, straddling the windowsill. It was a close fit, but he made it.

The hallway he stepped into was poorly lit due to none of the lights on the walls working. All of the doors were closed, and the floor had layers of dust mixed in with other debris that had gathered after not being disturbed for a long time.

Sherlock carefully walked down the hallway, keeping mostly to the side and stepping over the larger pieces of debris. At the end of the hallway was a flight of stairs that led up to the other floors and down to the main level. The steps were carpeted but were faded from use and covered in dust.

Sherlock leaned over the railing of the landing and glanced up at the other floors above him. But there was nothing to see, only dust in the air and more railings.

He was tempted to follow the stairs upward and look for any other signs someone else had been inside the building recently. It would be useful to know if the man they were looking for had recently been here or alternatively if they could tell how long he had lived here.

The building was oddly silent. If it was occupied after all and there were other residents that would be unusual. But this was quiet even for an unoccupied building. It seemed no one really was home. So why had this building been used for the return address on a letter sent over a year ago if it was empty.

Sherlock suddenly noticed the pounding and shouting coming below from outside the front door. It was muffled through the two solid doors but Sherlock easily recognized the detective's voice. He was starting to sound very irritated… and impatient. Who would have guessed the detective had such a short temper.

Sherlock pulled back from the railing and the mystery of the floors above. Instead he focused on the entry hall below and walked across the carpet to the top of the stairs.

He was only halfway down the stairs when Sherlock heard the detective call again, “Holmes! I know you’re in there somewhere!” 

Watson pounded twice on the outer door then shouted, scolding ineffectively, “You can’t just leave me out here! Especially when you’re not supposed to be in there at all!”

Sherlock exhaled sharply between his teeth and shook his head. He quickly hurried down the rest of the stairs and landed with both feet on the hall floor. Crossing to the inside door, Sherlock glanced through the glass pane to see the detective still standing outside the outer door.

He looked very distinctly not pleased. And Sherlock was very familiar with that look.

“Detective,” Sherlock called, turning the metal lock on the door and tugging it open.

Watson looked up at his title and promptly scowled as Sherlock stepped into the small area between the doors. Watson waited to tell him off until Sherlock undid this lock, turned the doorknob, and finally opened the outer door.

The detective looked at him, hands curled in his pockets and hunched inside his coat against the cold. He tilted his head, eyes narrowed. 

Watson sighed and shook his head. “You can’t just disappear on me whenever you want, Holmes. I’m responsible for your safety; it’s my job to keep you alive. If you need to go somewhere, you tell me. You’re with me now; so you can’t run off.”

“I didn’t run off,” Sherlock countered sharply. “We obviously weren’t coming in through the front door, so I thought I’d look for other ways in.” Sherlock gestured at the doorway he’d just walked through. “Obviously I found one.”

“Yes, obviously,” the detective echoed, drawing out the words. He looked carefully over the front door and doorframe. “You didn’t force the door, and you didn’t have keys… How did you get the door open?”

Sherlock fought down a scathing retort and bit out instead, “I turned the lock on the door.”

“Right, of course you did,” The detective agreed but didn’t sound convinced. “Just, next time… tell me where you’re going.”

“Yes, detective,” Sherlock allowed, stepping aside so the detective could enter the building.

As Watson passed him he added, “I don’t necessarily need to know how you got in. As long as I stay none the wiser and there’s no trace.”

“Yes, detective,” Sherlock replied slightly more agreeably. He pulled both the doors closed as they walked inside then stopped in the entry hall. “For the future, detective, many buildings in this city have fire escapes with windows as an escape route for each floor. As I’m sure you’re aware.”

Watson shot him a puzzled look, paying more attention to the entry hall. “Typical for a city.” Then apparently Sherlock’s comment finally sunk in. “Wait a minute, did you actually come in through the window?”

“It’s a common method that has been in use for centuries, detective. No need to be so surprised,” Sherlock answered, starting to walk along the carpeted hallway leading to the back of the building.

Watson followed after him, the wood floor creaking under his shoes. “Just seemed a little beneath you.”

Sherlock ignored the comment and reached out to the first door down the hallway. The doorknob twisted, but didn’t turn all the way. Locked.

“The initials on the directory outside were for the second floor, we should start our search there,” Watson instructed, turning back towards the front door.

“I came in through the first floor, and it was entirely deserted. There wasn’t any sign anyone had been there. The person who wrote the letters doesn’t seem to have been here lately, if he ever lived here at all.” Sherlock shook his head. “I doubt we’ll find anything.”

The detective turned his head as they walked together to the front entry again. “If you’re trying to stop me from investigating the first real lead we’ve had, it isn’t working, Holmes.” Watson warned. “And if he hasn’t been here lately that leaves us more time to look around.”

Sherlock swept his gaze around at what they could see of the inside of the building. “Are you planning on having your crime scene investigation team gather all the evidence and traces of people from this entire building?” He asked skeptically. “Wouldn’t that leave you with an overwhelming amount of evidence?”

“Not if it gives us tangible evidence we can actually use,” Watson replied, making a sharp turn at the bottom of the staircase to begin making his way upstairs. “And if by some miracle they did find complete fingerprints, or any fingerprints, I would give them raises if I could.”

Sherlock hummed in response, pretending to be listening as he continued looking around.

The carpet was faded from years of foot traffic and worn so thin each step groaned in protest under their feet. It was a good thing they weren’t attempting to sneak up on anyone.

They arrived at the landing of the first floor, and stood staring down at the dust and debris littered hallway.

“Well, it looks like you were right about the building being deserted,” Watson said, standing beside Sherlock. He glanced down the hallway and at the doors on each side. “This is where you came in?”

Sherlock nodded, looking up the stairs leading to the other floors. “Yes, and before you accuse me I didn’t touch anything, I only walked down it.” He turned to glance down the hallway. “It doesn’t look like anything has changed in the last few minutes.”

“And you didn’t hear anything, or see anything,” Watson questioned, turning to stare at Sherlock.

Tiring of the questions, Sherlock left Watson to walk over to the bottom of the stairs up to the next floor. “No, I did not. Isn’t it the second floor we’re more interested in?”

Watson hummed quietly. Then he nodded and followed after Sherlock. “That is where we should start searching, you’re right.”

“Upwards then,” Sherlock declared and started up the steps one at a time, going slowly enough for Watson to keep pace with him.

They arrived at the landing of the second floor, which looked exactly the same as the first floor, and stopped at the end of the hallway.

“This one looks just as deserted,” Watson commented unnecessarily. “I suppose we should start at the closest door and work our way down the hall. Eliminate each room at a time.”

“If I’m to check rooms on my own, I don’t suppose you’d let me have a weapon to defend myself,” Sherlock requested, trying to make it sound entirely reasonable. “In case someone may be waiting for us.”

“From the look of this place I doubt anyone’s waiting for us, or even here at all,” Watson commented quietly under his breath. Louder he said, “I am not letting you near a weapon until I know you can use it and won’t hurt yourself.” The detective glanced to him. “Knowing the logistics of firing a weapon doesn’t count if you can’t hit anything.”

“It isn’t professional to make assumptions, detective,” Sherlock warned, walking towards the nearest door. “Perhaps I have excellent aim and have fired a weapon before.”

The detective didn’t reply exactly, but his shoulders were shaking slightly in what Sherlock suspected may be stifled laughter. “Mm hmm.” He walked over to the door on the opposite side of the hall. “Hopefully you won’t need to defend yourself.”

“I haven’t finished signing all of the forms your captain insisted on smothering me with,” Sherlock mentioned, reaching for the doorknob. “So if I were to get injured I’m fairly certain you would be blamed.”

Watson chuckled. “Comforting.” He reached out and knocked rapidly on the door. “NYPD, open the door!”

~~~

Over a minute later there was no answer and no one had come to open the door. John leaned forward and pressed an ear to the wooden surface.

“You are aware that doesn’t in fact work,” Holmes commented helpfully from just behind John.

John didn’t have to look to know Holmes was watching him instead of helping to search the other rooms. “Well, since I don’t have a water glass I’m making do.”

“You’ve seen the state of the stairs and the hallways. No one has been here in months, if not longer.” Holmes insisted, looking around them with little apparent interest. “No one will answer the door even if you do knock and announce yourself.”

John finally turned around to smile and reply smartly, “That will make it easier for us to search the building.”

Holmes blinked, surprised. “The entire building?”

“We’ll start with this floor first,” John promised. He turned and tested the door again; it was still locked. “I really didn’t plan for kicking down any doors today. Why lock a door in a deserted building?”

“Safety measure I imagine,” Holmes answered his rhetorical question. After a pause he added, offering, “I can open that for you.”

John took his time turning around; trying not to look shocked by the offer. “How would you do that?”

Holmes didn’t reply, he just slid a hand into the pocket of his coat. And smiled.

No one was here, and John doubted the building manager had been by recently- if there was one. This was a much easier option, and it also meant he didn’t have to kick down any doors.

“All right, go ahead. I don’t want to see anything,” John instructed Holmes with an encouraging wave of his hand. He moved towards the door on the other side of the hallway.

Holmes walked past him, looking pleased for some reason. He held a small, thin box in one hand and was using his other to undo the zipper.

John paused for a moment, listening as Holmes settled in front of the door then started working at it with some tool: lock picking tools, John suspected. But he wouldn’t turn around to look.

While he waited for Holmes to open the door, John idly wondered what the man’s success record was. Then he reached out to open the door in front of him.

It proved to be a small hallway closet, barely large enough for one person to stand inside. It also didn’t look like it had been used or disturbed in several months. There was grime and dust everywhere, especially on the shelves and floor.

He did a quick check of the closet then closed the door.

“Are you finished with the-” John started to ask when he heard a ‘click’ and then turned to see the door creak open.

“Finished, detective,” Holmes announced, slowly standing up. He slid the black case back into his pocket and took a step away from the door. “I imagine you’ll want to go inside first.”

“Considering I am the one with the badge and am armed, and we also don’t know if anyone is actually in there, yes I would,” John said, pulling his jacket away from where his gun was tucked into his waistband. He carefully took it out and slid the safety off.

John walked over and waved Holmes away from the door. “Stay back.”

Instead of responding or moving away like John had instructed, Holmes glanced over towards the door John had just searched. “Did you find anything in that room?”

“No, it’s just a hallway closet,” John answered; not looking away from the door they were standing in front of. “Now, please stand back.”

Holmes huffed irritably but took exactly two measured steps backward.

After checking Holmes was a somewhat safe distance away, John reached out and pushed the door open just enough to give him room to slip inside.

He turned back to give Holmes a firm, warning look. “Stay here. If you hear anything, or see anything, call for me. Understand?”

“Yes, detective Watson,” Holmes agreed, staring evenly at John.

John nodded then stepped forward and slipped inside the room.

~~

Sherlock waited impatiently for Detective Watson to come back out of the room. Hopefully they would find something while searching this building. So far it didn’t seem to be as significant a lead as the detective had imagined. Yet there were still continuing to spend the time searching everything.

The rest of the building remained silent; enough so that every so often he could hear the detective moving inside the room. It must not have been a very large room so the detective should hopefully finish soon. Or Sherlock hoped Watson would, because surely one of the other rooms held a better lead.

Finally footsteps came closer to the door, the wooden boards creaking. Then the door opened to reveal the detective standing on the other side.

Sherlock shifted to glance beyond the detective, searching. “You found nothing inside. There was no sign of anyone having been in there,” He considered the traces of dust on the man’s jacket and trousers, “For months I’d say.”

“At least a few months,” the detective admitted, mouth pursed in annoyance. “The calendar I found in the bedroom was on a few months after the letters to you started. Or the dates on the envelopes.” 

Watson stepped back into the hallway then turned to pull the door closed behind him. “So he hasn’t been here in that long.”

Sherlock stepped aside as the detective moved further down the hallway. Critically he asked, “Why are you making assumptions? An old calendar and layers of dust aren’t substantial enough for the entire truth. Isn’t it just as likely the man simply hasn’t been in that specific room?”

Instead of looking annoyed by Sherlock questioning him, Watson laughed. “You do like specifics, don’t you.” 

As they walked side-by-side, Watson continued, “All right, so that is possible. But I’m not making assumptions, just forming conclusions from what I saw. This is part of my job, Holmes. I’ve searched places like this before.”

“And you obviously saw everything in the room essential to your investigation,” Sherlock replied knowingly. He continued following Watson along the hallway.

“Well, we do still have the last room on this floor to search,” Watson reminded him, heading directly towards the last door at the end of the hallway near the window. “The room I just searched was mainly living quarters. If this building has a typical apartment layout the rest of the rooms should be behind this door.” 

He shook his head. “I don’t understand why rooms in these types of buildings are laid out so irregularly. Why would you want all the rooms separated out like this?”

“Compared to typical apartments that are barely large enough to walk around in.” Sherlock commented blandly. Thankfully his apartment was not a typical city flat. Some idiots might say circumstances aligned to make sure he lived in the best, most spacious place available. Or he pulled strings and threw money around to make sure of it. Sherlock knew it was more due to the fault of nosy siblings.

“This city isn’t best known for its spacious living quarters, Holmes,” Watson told him. “It’s not that surprising my flat is small.” He glanced sideways at Sherlock as they came to a stop in front of the last door. “You may have a nicer place, but most of us don’t.”

Sherlock bit his tongue to stop a less than polite comment slipping out. Instead he questioned, feeding his impatience, “When exactly are you planning on going through the door? Soon I hope.”

Watson coughed, looking appropriately apologetic. “Right now. I’ll go in first, and clear the rooms. If you want to follow you stay behind me the entire time. You also follow all my directions and don’t question me. Tell me you’ll do that, Holmes.”

Sherlock restrained himself from telling the detective he wasn’t an idiot, and that it wasn’t as if he was looking to be shot. Instead Sherlock asked, “Is this about those waiver forms I didn’t finish signing? If I’m shot or injured will you or the precinct be paying? Or does it change now that you’ve warned me first?”

Watson hadn’t moved, especially not towards the door. He asked exasperatedly, “Can’t you just say you do understand?”

“I’ve already said I understand detective, how many times do you expect me to repeat myself?” Sherlock asked in a huff, pushing his hands into his pockets. “I don’t enjoy it.”

“It’s just a precaution, Holmes. Now,” Watson pointed at the floor beneath Sherlock’s feet. “Stay right there until I call you in.”

He turned to the door and tried the doorknob. Surprisingly, unlike the other doors, it wasn’t locked. It turned easily under his hand

Sherlock sighed, leaning casually against the wall. “Don’t take long, detective.”

“I’ll take as long as I need,” Watson told him, slowly pushing the door open. It moved easily and silently under his touch, revealing part of a room just as layered in dust as the rest of the building.

“Go on then, detective,” Sherlock said, positioning himself just behind the detective.

Watson nodded and raised his gun to aim it through the doorway, then called, “NYPD!”

Silence met the detective’s announcement. Sherlock peered over Watson’s shoulder but saw no movement inside the room. “Yet another dead end, detective. I’ve seen attics better preserved than this room.”

The detective turned his head slightly and treated Sherlock to a look. “We still have to search it, Holmes. It’s called procedure, and being thorough. So stay behind me.”

“Yes, detective.” Sherlock huffed. He still followed Watson inside the room, which appeared to have been meant as a living room. It was unfurnished with no personal effects in sight. Completely uninhabited.

Watson walked inside and went off to the left, starting a slow circle around the sides of the room. While the detective took time to inspect every inch and speck, Sherlock stood against the wall by the door and waited.

This main room had likely originally been two separate rooms. But people enjoyed rearranging their apartments. On the right side of the room were two doors that led to smaller inner rooms, if this had a typical layout. Sherlock began to move along the wall towards the closer of the two doors.

He proved to have horrible timing since at the same time Watson started walking along the same wall from the opposite direction towards Sherlock. When the detective noticed Sherlock hadn’t stayed where he was told (like a good officer), he was treated to a mixed look of annoyance and disappointment.

For some reason instead of feeling his own annoyance spike at such a look, like it usually would, Sherlock found himself more irritated that he had done something to make Watson look at him like this. But that was ridiculous, he had as good as warned Watson that he wasn’t good at doing as he was told. He even had a long history to prove so.

Not voicing his annoyance or scolding Sherlock, the detective quickly walked the rest of the way over to him. Watson stopped on the other side of the doorframe from Sherlock.

Watson gave Sherlock a long look before finally saying, calmly, “I realize I apparently can’t stop you, but you need to tell me when you decide to investigate on your own. I don’t want to see you out the corner of my eye and think you’re a suspect then accidently shoot you because you took me by surprise. Sometimes instinct can be too strong to control.”

Filing that interesting piece of information away to puzzle over later, Sherlock glanced down at the weapon Watson was holding at his side. The safety was still off, Sherlock noted. 

“You wouldn’t have shot me, even if I had taken you by surprise. You have too strong of a moral principle. First you would announce yourself as NYPD and tell me to surrender, no matter who I was.” Sherlock rejoined, speaking more quickly than he typically did. “Even surprised, your first instinct isn’t to shoot. You dislike injuring people, you’d rather heal.”

The detective blinked at him, expression changing rapidly from surprise to anger before finally settling on resignation. “Still. Just in case, I don’t want to hurt you. Like I said before, I’m responsible for you.”

Taken aback a little by Watson’s sincerity, Sherlock cleared his throat. “We still have what’s behind the two doors left to search.” He offered.

Watson’s glance was searching, but all he said was, “Right, stand back.”

Sherlock did as he was told this time, taking a step back so when the Detective pulled the door open he wasn’t in any danger.

The door hit the wall with a hollow thud, inches away from Sherlock’s face. Watson raised his weapon to aim it through the doorway at an unseen point inside. He leaned forward to peer with narrowed eyes around the room beyond. From how his expression didn’t change Sherlock suspected the detective had trouble seeing anything at all.

Watson stepped back from the doorway, and turned his head to look to Sherlock. “It’s completely dark inside, I can’t see anything. The windows must be boarded over or covered with something.”

“Suspicious,” Sherlock murmured. Louder he said, “I don’t suppose you can see well enough to locate a light of some kind.”

The detective laughed amusedly. “Not even one. I didn’t see any in the other room either.”

Sherlock considered this and replied, “The likelihood of someone waiting, lurking inside in the dark, is very low. Especially considering the state of the rest of the building.”

He was proven wrong when a man’s voice, light and just on the edge of sending chills down the spine, greeted cheerfully from inside the room, “Oh Sherlock, darling, you don’t know just how long I’ve been waiting for you.”

Barely a second later all the lights inside the room came on at once, as if a master switch had been flipped. It wasn’t to the point of being blinding, but both Sherlock and Watson were momentarily thrown off-balance.

Sherlock recovered first, blinking rapidly to adjust his eyes. After a second or so the lights returned to a more normal level, allowing Sherlock his first glimpse of the room.

It was a small room, roughly half the size of the one behind them if that. As the detective had suspected the windows were covered with what looked like cloth. There was no one inside, and no furnishings or personal effects. Just like all the other rooms.

The only object inside the room was a plain wooden table set in almost the center of the room. It was waist high and only a few feet long and across. A perfectly ordinary table… except for the black rectangular box sitting on top of it with two small speakers wired into the sides.

It was the only possible source of the strange voice that had addressed him. He was proven right when the speakers crackled with static before a middle-aged woman’s voice spoke from it this time.

“It’s so wonderful to meet you finally, Sherlock. Although I do deeply regret it can’t be face to face. I wish I could see your expression right now.”

The floorboards creaked behind him as Watson came to stand next to Sherlock.

“Who are you?” Watson barked in the direction of the box.

Sherlock glanced over quickly to him to see Watson’s jaw was set and his eyes glaring. The detective’s grip was firm around the weapon in his hand. He was obviously not pleased by this new development.

“Oh Sherlock, you brought a guest to our first meeting? Tsk tsk,” the man’s voice scolded from the speakers. An edge started to sneak into the already unsettling voice. “That’s not fair. I thought it would be just the two of us, I was planning on this being romantic.”

If possible Watson looked even angrier now. “Who are you?” He demanded again, the words coming out short and sharp.

The unsettling edge to the voice grew until the sharpness was all that was left. “I don’t talk to strangers. Anyway, you’re not a necessary part of this conversation. I only want to talk to Sherlock.” The voice changed to a young boy’s voice next. “Run away, run away fast. Run away now.”

“You aren’t frightening me,” Watson replied rapidly, his voice flat. He looked over to Sherlock for confirmation. “Neither of us is scared.”

“You’re not scaredy, scaredy cats?” The boy's voice taunted; then changed back to the woman’s voice. “The friends you keep Sherlock, I’m disappointed. So bossy.”

Sherlock was growing tired of whatever game the man behind the voices was playing. Watson was obviously not getting anywhere with his demands or questions.

So Sherlock asked the real, relevant question. “Are you, or are you not, the person who wrote me several fan letters over the last year?”

“I am and am not,” the boy's voice riddled before giggling gleefully. The woman’s voice confessed, “I may have, yes. Don’t a lot of people write you fan letters, Sherlock? You’re so famous.”

“Some people, yes. However I’m only interested in your letters at the moment. The three letters you typed on expensive paper and signed as ‘M.’ Those were yours, correct?”

“Oh Sherlock, you know me so well,” the man said happily, amusement clear in his voice. “Yes, I admit, that was me. Did you like them? I thought you’d like them.”

The detective had been shifting restlessly ever since Sherlock took over the conversation, clenching and unclenching his fist. He stopped from interrupting longer than Sherlock had expected. That was until he blurted out inquisitively, “How did you know the details of the murders you wrote about in your letters? Who told you?”

“No one told me, detective,” the woman’s voice chided, over pronouncing each syllable.

Watson and Sherlock exchanged glances. Sherlock could see that Watson was worried, and appeared to still be processing this information.

Continuing to hold Sherlock’s gaze, Watson asked curiously, “What makes you think I’m a detective?”

The man clucked chidingly. “Please detective, I’m not an idiot. I know things. So yes, I know you’re a detective.”

“Why did you write those letters? Why were they specifically for me? What do you want from me?” Sherlock asked rapidly, trying to make the man- or whoever it was- answer a question directly for once. “Why focus on me?”

“Oh, Sherlock,” the man breathed, sounding disappointed now. Sherlock squared his shoulders, and steeled himself. “Why can’t you see the connection we have? I’m the only one who can really see the brilliance of your writing. I know and understand your genius, like no one else can. That’s why I wanted to meet you.”

“You call this a meeting?” Watson snapped, waving a hand in a gesture that encompassed the entire room. “We’re talking to a box in the middle of a room in an abandoned building.”

Sherlock’s mouth twisted sharply. “You believe we have a connection. And that you’re just as much of a genius as I am.”

“Well, of course, Sherlock darling. Haven’t you realized that yet?” It was still the man’s voice talking, he hadn’t changed it. Which likely meant this was the man’s real voice.

“So you’re the ‘M’ who wrote me those fan letters. You wanted me to know all the details about the murders, and how much you enjoyed the authenticity of my writing,” Sherlock reasoned aloud, fighting the urge to pace the room to help him think. “You wrote the letters to establish a dialogue with me. And to help make me aware of our connection. So now I am here, what do you want from me?”

“Oh Sherlock, it’s much too early in our relationship for that sort of question,” the man replied, sounding pleased by Sherlock’s question. “No... I’ve brought you here so you can prove your genius to me. I want to see for myself how your mind works, with a private first row seat.”

“I don’t need to prove myself to someone like you,” Sherlock snapped angrily. He disliked having to conduct a conversation with a disembodied voice from a box, with no idea of where it was originating. And there was no reason for him to prove himself to anyone. He knew he was a genius. 

“We’re done here,” Sherlock announced to Watson, turning around on his heel.

Watson treated him to a curious look, and didn’t move.

“Oh Sherlock,” the woman’s voice chided, words dripping with disappointment. “I was so hoping we could be cordial about this.”

The box suddenly began beeping steadily, loud enough to fill the entire room. 

Watson quickly looked at Sherlock, eyes wide and alarmed. “Is that-?”

Sherlock met the detective’s gaze, feeling his heart beat faster as he tried to remain outwardly calm. The detective looked evenly back at him, appearing just as calm.

Watson was now just as involved in this as Sherlock. Which meant Sherlock was responsible for both of them as he tried to negotiate with the madman on the other end.

With that understanding between them Sherlock turned back to face the table. “Did you just trigger a bomb?” He demanded of the box. “How is endangering our lives fit into your plan to have me prove my genius?”

The boy giggled gleefully again. “But this is part of the game, Sherlock. And now you have to play! C’mon play, play!”

“We aren’t here to play a game!” Watson snapped angrily, grip tightening on his weapon. “Turn off the bomb!”

“I wasn’t talking to you, detective,” the man’s voice chided, almost hissing.

He appeared to be finally losing his temper. Sherlock hoped Watson would follow his lead.

“What do you expect me to do in this game of yours?” He asked, for now trying to ignore the bomb beeping. He needed to be at his best for whatever game the man was playing.

“You do want to play then! I thought you would, Sherlock!” The man said cheerfully, and Sherlock thought he heard him clap his hands.

“We are on a time limit here, what with your bomb and everything,” Watson replied impatiently, but his eyes were scanning the room.

The man said icily, “I understand you want the detective to stay with you, Sherlock. But can’t you stop him from speaking?”

“I doubt it,” Sherlock answered, watching Watson instead of looking at the box. “Now, what am I meant to do to play this game of yours?”

“Well,” the man drawled, stretching out the word. “I have a riddle for you. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

Sherlock changed to stare incredulously at the box. “A riddle? You want me to solve a riddle?”

“A very complicated riddle. One only a genius can solve.” The man promised. After a pause he asked, soft but eager, “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Sherlock answered.

“Listen closely then. A twelve-year-old boy travels to the city for a swimming competition. He is a champion swimmer with years of practice. After changing he waits approximately a half an hour for his race. He enters the water with the rest of the contestants. On the last lap the boy begins struggling in the water, going under several times. Finally he sinks to the bottom of the pool, drowning. He is pronounced dead soon after by the ME who states cause of death as a seizure in the water. Otherwise he was a perfectly healthy twelve year old, other than a rash of eczema.”

Sherlock waited for the man to continue, but he appeared to have finished. “Is that all the information you’ll give me?”

“Explain his real cause of death, Sherlock dear,” the man replied instead, sounding expectant.

Sherlock paused; absorbing the sparse details he had been given. Finally he asked, more of a question than a statement, “You don’t believe the official cause of death.”

The man tsked at him. “Public and official information is rarely actually true, Sherlock. You should know that,” he said, disappointed.

“Alright, so I’m to assume the boy didn’t die from a seizure in the water. According to you he was fine from the time he arrived at the pool to before he died in the water. Which means, he had a reaction to something in the water. Possibly a chemical?”

The man remained frustratingly silent.

“Did any of the other contestants have a similar reaction while in the water?” Sherlock said, tired of not having all the necessary information.

“Tone, Sherlock.” The voice snapped. After a dramatic sigh he finally answered, “No, they were all fine.”

Sherlock nodded to himself. “Then it was the boy specifically. Some kind of reaction to the water with something on his skin, or inside his body. According to you he was perfectly healthy. So what would react to water, or chlorine?”

“I’m waiting, Sherlock!” The voice insisted, but not quite irritated.

Watson stepped closer to Sherlock, looking worried by the situation. The detective glanced at the box then leaned in to say, softly, “Holmes, there’s no reason to play this madman’s game. You don’t need to solve this riddle. We can walk out of here right now. Let’s leave and I’ll call Clara to have her try and track his location. We’ll find him, I promise. But from what I’ve heard so far we won’t get any real answers out of him. He’s too eager for you to play his game and to taunt you. And the worst part is that you’re letting him! He’s stringing you along, Holmes, don’t play into it.”

Watson was interrupting his train of thoughts with his irritatingly good-intentioned warnings and morals. Why should he worry about getting answers when he already knew this man had written the letters? It was obvious, just as obvious that the man on the other end wouldn’t give them the answers they were looking for. Some geniuses or criminals enjoyed monologuing about their brilliance and future plans. This man enjoyed games instead.

“There is nothing to worry about, detective.” Sherlock reassured, trying not to snap but sound confident instead. “Call Clara if you wish. I doubt she’ll have any success locating him. He’ll have thoroughly covered his tracks.”

At Watson’s skeptical look and obviously growing impatience, Sherlock added, “Instead of meeting in person he chooses the much more dramatic method of arming a bomb and using speakers to talk with us. Then he waited for us to find this place only to play a game of riddles with me.” He paused for breath, and emphasis, before finishing, “Do you really think such a man would make it easy for us to find him?”

The detective’s jaw clenched, his frustration with the situation finally showing. “I don’t care about how easy he’ll make it for us, Holmes. He wrote letters to you months ago with details about a murder we only just encountered, and when we go to the address there’s a man with a bomb and riddles waiting. Instead of playing his games, I want to find him. Clara can help us do that, or at least give us a head start.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to tell the detective that simply hoping wasn’t helping them at all.

“Tick tock, Sherlock! Have you solved it yet?” The man’s voice broke in, far too cheerful for the looming countdown.

Sherlock treated Watson to a forceful look before turning his full attention to the riddle. He had to believe Watson would do what was best for both of them.

~~~

John left Holmes to try and solve the riddle he was so insistent on answering. And what kind of riddle involved a twelve-year-old boy drowning in a swimming pool? What twisted mind thought of such an awful way to die?

He pulled his phone from his pocket and unlocked the screen. John selected Clara’s direct line from his contact list and waited for it to connect.

But instead of ringing the phone beeped at him, claiming it had no service.

How could that be? He may not be technologically savvy, but he knew how to at least call someone.

John exited his contacts list then tried to call Clara again. Still no service. He tried sending a text to her as a final attempt, but it wouldn’t send.

He looked up at Holmes again, shoulders slumping as he tried to think of how he and Holmes would leave here uninjured.

“No, if he was an experienced swimmer any condition would have manifested much earlier. This was unexpected. No one knew about it.” Holmes was theorizing aloud without seeming to pause for breath. Sometime while John wasn’t looking the man had started pacing a few steps back and forth again.

“I’m waiting, Sherlock. And getting bored.” The man’s voice announced, interrupting impatiently. “Do you think I should speed up your countdown a little? How about I adjust it so you only have thirty seconds left?”

“That’s not fair!” John protested, his heart starting to race even faster.

“Quiet, detective,” the man’s voice barked in nearly a yell, the speakers bursting with static. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you trying to contact someone at your precinct. Which. Just. Will. Not. Do!”

Over the fading yell Holmes suddenly exclaimed, “Poison! He was poisoned!”

“How Sherlock, I want to know how.”

“Not anything fast acting, it had to take time to absorb into his system. He couldn’t have ingested it that would be too fast. What else…”

“Sherlock~!” The man sing-songed, as if calling Holmes’ name would help him think faster.

~~

“Holmes, let’s just leave. You don’t need to solve this idiotic riddle,” Watson told him, trying to get his attention. 

But Sherlock barely heard him. Instead he was quickly sorting through all the possible ways the boy could be poisoned. “Someone would have noticed if it was done in plain sight. So the poisoning was clever, hidden from watching eyes. How can you secretly poison a boy in a way that it absorbs into his system, yet looks like an accidental death?”

“Use something that he would have long term contact and exposure to. Something on his skin would probably work best, especially if he used it before the competition.”

Sherlock abruptly paused in his pacing, turning around to stare at Watson who had spoken. Watson, who had just moments ago been practically yelling at him to leave. And was now looking evenly back at him; still obviously tense from the time limit they were working against but not quite as impatient. Now he was actively participating.

“And exactly what method would you recommend, Doctor Watson?” Sherlock asked, surprising even himself by asking for another opinion. But he was not an educated medical professional, and the only experience he had was the times he’d consulted medical examiners during the brief period of his detective work.

“Some sort of liquid or cream would be my first suggestion,” Watson answered, crossing his arms as he considered. “Any topical substance would work.”

“Topical substance,” Sherlock echoed, musing. They were both ignoring the continuous beeping of the countdown now. “Topical liquid… cream.”

Cream.

Sherlock spun back towards the box sitting innocently on the table. “You said the boy was in perfect health, except for a rash of eczema.”

After a long pause the man’s voice hummed before agreeing, “Yesss… I did.”

“Eczema is a common condition. It’s typically found on the hands, and a topical prescription cream is the most common treatment,” Sherlock explained, letting the words flow as his thoughts and the facts connected. “Introducing a poison into the cream while the boy didn’t have it with him would be relatively simple, especially in liquid form. No one would suspect his prescription cream would be the reason for his death.”

Watson coughed and commented, “Not your typical kind of poisoning.”

“No, it’s much cleverer than that. It required intense planning. And somehow locating the poison.” Sherlock said, realizing how much effort had gone into committing this murder. Especially to make the death appear natural. “Also clever to do it during the competition. Police would naturally leap to natural causes, an unexpected sudden seizure in the water. It was all genius really.”

“Sherlock, darling, I knew you were a fellow enthusiast of creative murders! Aren’t the cleverer methods the best? So genius.” The man exclaimed enthusiastically, a note of glee lifting his voice.

“If the two of you are finished getting excited about someone managing to cleverly poison a boy without anyone realizing,” Watson scolded, speaking slowly like they were both slow-witted.

Sherlock looked at him and noticed that while Watson sounded disapproving, it wasn’t all how he felt. “Yes?” He asked when the detective trailed off.

Watson’s mouth twisted for a brief second as they exchanged looks. Then he refocused his attention on the box, and looked like the police officer he was. “Holmes solved your riddle, just like you wanted. Now you’re going to give us answers. And answer every question we ask. No more games.”

“But games are so much fun, detective. And I will answer all your questions, I promise. Every. Last. One.” The man promised, at least sounding truthful. “But first… I have another riddle for you, Sherlock darling.”

“No, no more riddles!” Watson commanded, slicing a hand through the air. “He’s already played your game.”

The man didn’t seem to be listening or paying any attention to Watson and his protests about the game they were being forced to play. This man obviously didn’t care at all for authority figures, especially police. He was much more intent on following through with his game of riddles.

However Watson felt about the situation, Sherlock was admittedly intrigued by the prospect of a new mystery. “Tell me your second riddle.”

There was the sound of clapping hands before the man said eagerly, “Excellent, Sherlock. Excellent. Let’s see, which should I tell you next.”

The man didn’t continue. Instead he trailed off and remained silent, making Sherlock wait for an agonizing amount of time.

Finally the man proclaimed, “Oh, I think you will like this one, Sherlock. Let’s start at the beginning. A car is found abandoned by the river, doors open, and no sign of being touched. A city banker rented the car the morning before it was found abandoned. He paid in cash. His wife was told he was going on a business trip, but he never arrived at the location. And further investigation proved he had been let go from his job months earlier.”

Sherlock sighed noisily. “Boring. Tell me a different one.”

The man chucked quietly. “Patience, Sherlock. I haven’t told you the best part yet.”

“I don’t think I want to hear this,” Watson declared, moving away from the table and towards the other side of the room.

Sherlock watched him walk near the windows. Watson was pretending he needed to burn off his anger and inability to act in the tense situation. But the detective was betrayed by energy in his steps, and the way he was sweeping his eyes across the room.

So he wasn’t as irritated or worried as he was acting. Perhaps there was even more to the detective than was obvious at first or second glance.

Vying for time and needing more information, Sherlock attended to the riddle he’d been given. At the moment it seemed their only chance to get out of the room without the bomb going off right in front of them.

“Well, what was the ‘best part’ you were waiting to tell me?” Sherlock questioned, pretending to sound bored while he watched Watson.

“Oh, are you ready to play along now?” The man asked, sounding displeased he didn’t have all of Sherlock’s attention.

The riddles were interesting and a puzzle for him to solve, especially when lately he’d been extremely bored. Being stuck between novels with few ideas for his next story made that happen. Ellie and Mrs. Hudson were long suffering survivors of his bored periods.

And now this supposed manic fan was being interesting, writing multiple letters with impossible contents, and offering him crimes framed as riddles. How could he not stay and solve them? Even with a countdown from a bomb.

“I’ve been waiting, you’re the one who’s taking far too long to say something. Tell me more information.” Sherlock challenged.

“All right, Sherlock, all right. The best part is there was a large amount of blood staining the front drivers seat. There wasn’t a body anywhere near the car, yet the blood on the seat is confirmed as the banker's.” The man described carefully, laying it all out.

Sherlock appreciated this. Every little detail was important no matter what people believed or had in their heads as right or wrong. It was why he tried to incorporate every necessary detail in his novels, not only to make them more realistic but also to create a full picture.

“The only thing left in the car was a business card in the glove compartment for the car rental place he rented the car from. The wife, when questioned, said he had been feeling down for months. She also mentioned that while it was unusual for him to forget, he hadn’t renewed the lease on their car, which was why he needed to rent one.”

Sherlock tapped his fingers against his leg. He sighed in annoyance, irritated that this riddle wasn’t as interesting as he’d hoped. Or as much as the first riddle.

He tracked the detective to where the man was standing by one of the large, covered windows. Watson was alternatively trying to find a gap or crack to look out through and waving his phone around in the air as if trying to find a signal. So at least one of them was being active.

“Boring!” Sherlock declared loudly. He turned and walked around the table in Watson’s direction.

“Stop!” The man’s voice demanded, the command sharp with fury.

Sherlock found himself pausing mid-step. He stopped, took a breath, and looked across the few feet to Watson. The detective looked back at him, eyes wide with alarm and a hand on his gun.

But he wasn’t springing into action yet. He was waiting.

Sherlock nodded in recognition. Then he slowly turned around and walked back to in front of the table. He glared down at the box and hissed, “What? You’re being boring!”

“You haven’t let me finish, Sherlock,” the man snapped just as angrily. “I wouldn’t ever bore you. Just listen to me.”

“Fine.” Sherlock bit out. This would be a ridiculous waste of time if the man was not going to answer their questions and also gave him boring, stupid riddles. Sherlock fit the urge to lash out, either physically or with his best weapon- words. Really, what was the point of this excursion if they didn’t learn anything?

“Please. Continue.” He spat out, as if it physically harmed him to say it.

“Thank you,” the man breathed. Then he cleared his throat. “What you didn’t let me finish saying is that when the wife was questioned, she referred to her husband in the past tense. Even though the car had just been found. The blood, when tested, was found to be the banker's blood like I told you. But it wasn’t fresh blood.”

Sherlock’s irritation faded slightly at this new information. “The blood wasn’t fresh? How many days old was it? How likely is it that the tests were correct?”

“Oh they were very correct, Sherlock dear. And the blood wasn’t days old. It was frozen.” The voice sounded almost gleeful as he divulged this vital piece of information.

“Frozen? Why would blood be frozen?” Sherlock mused aloud. “If he was dead, or taken, how would they freeze that much blood?”

“How much blood did you say was found in the car?” Watson asked, joining in. He stepped away from the covered window he was investigating, still holding his phone in his hand.

Sherlock looked to him, curious why Watson was asking questions now. “Why does it matter? There was quite a lot of it.”

Watson glanced to him briefly. But he didn’t answer Sherlock’s question. 

Instead the detective walked over to stand next to Sherlock and repeated his question for the box. “How much blood was found in the car?”

“About a pint,” the man admitted sharply, plainly irritated. He didn’t seem to like Watson joining in their game of riddles.

Watson shook his head rapidly. “Exactly how much?” He insisted again.

After a very long pause the man’s voice exhaled sharply. Then he snapped out, “A pint.”

The detective’s eyes widened in surprise, and in what Sherlock took to be recognition. “A pint,” he repeated then turned to meet Sherlock’s curious gaze. “That’s too exact for it to be an accident. Or to die of blood loss. There’s only one situation that involves exactly a pint of blood.”

When Watson didn’t continue, Sherlock asked, “Which is?”

“Blood donation. When people donate blood a single pint bag is filled at a time. The filled bags are stored, often in a freezer, until they’re needed,” Watson explained simply yet knowingly.

Sherlock noted Watson had apparently not forgotten anything he’d learned as a doctor. “So it wasn’t fresh blood, and wasn’t from the banker being killed in the car. It was a pint of blood the banker had previously donated; a pint that was for some reason used in the car.” Sherlock mused out loud, restating facts to help with clarification. “Why? Why leave the car abandoned where it would obviously be found? Or use such a large amount of blood which would plainly lead people to believe he’d been murdered, even with no sign of his body.” 

Sherlock shook his head, trying to make it connect together the way he knew it did. “Why go to so much trouble?”

“You have three minutes to solve this riddle, Sherlock.” The man’s voice warned. “I expect you won’t need the entire time.”

On the front of the black box numbers suddenly flickered to life, showing a three-minute countdown. After two long mechanical beeps the display changed to “2:59.”

Watson froze, eyes locked on the numbers as they slowly counted down. Sherlock wondered if the man had any experience with bombs. Obviously he wouldn’t have in his previous career as a doctor. As a detective however...

“Holmes,” Watson called, sounding like it wasn’t the first time he’d done so. “Holmes… you need to solve this riddle. Just focus on that, all right?”

That was.... kind? Kind was the correct word wasn’t it? The detective apparently trusted him and his skill to solve the riddle. Such a level of trust was… new.

“All right,” Sherlock agreed, then a second later winced at the lack of confidence in his words. He cleared his throat to try again. “I will,” he promised this time.

Watson smiled slightly at him. “Go on then.”

All right. The pint of blood had been deliberately put on the driver's seat of an abandoned car. A rental car the city banker had paid for in cash the day before. The blood had been donated by the banker then frozen and stored somewhere. The placement in the car had been deliberate. Who had access to a pint of blood? Whoever it was had wanted whoever found the car to believe the banker was dead. If he was dead then who had taken the body, or where was the body?

Was the wife in on it? They usually were. The most simplistic explanation was that the wife had tired of the husband's behavior and decided to get rid of him in a more creative and permanent method than simply divorce. Perhaps she had planned all of this. Women were the more sinister sex.

“The wife was behind the blood and the abandoned car,” Sherlock announced to the box, turning around to face it again. “She disliked her husband's recent depressive and distant behavior, so she decided to get rid of him permanently.”

Watson was nodding his agreement. But the man’s voice crackled from the speakers as he declared loudly, “Wrong, Sherlock!”

Sherlock startled, taking an involuntary step backward. “What? No, of course I’m right. She’s the one with the strongest and only possible motive. Love is the most powerful motivator there is. Once she realized her husband was no longer the man she’d married, and she was about to lose everything-”

“Boring!” The man announced, in a mock imitation of Sherlock’s earlier pronouncement. “Do you really think I would bring you here just to give you such a boring riddle? No, no. No. Think harder, Sherlock. Think more cleverly.”

How could he have been wrong? It was all so clear.

“The wife was part of her husband's murder. If she didn’t perform the act herself, she helped in a different way. She is just as guilty.” Sherlock stated in a tone that made it clear this was a statement and not a question.

The man hummed quietly before finally declaring, “No, try again.”

“Wait, the wife wasn’t part of her husband's mysterious and suspect disappearance or possible murder?” Watson questioned, sounding just as doubtful as Sherlock felt. “But that answer makes the most sense. It’s one of the most typical crimes.”

“Not this time, detective!” The man’s voice rang out cheerfully. He sounded like he enjoyed how Sherlock and Watson were struggling. But the seconds were still counting down rapidly to zero. They were running out of time.

“So the wife wasn’t the murderer, and she didn’t plan her husband's disappearance.” Sherlock restated, trying to fit in this new, nonsensical, piece of information. “Despite being the best and most rational suspect. So, who else had motive to get rid of the man?”

The voice sighed dramatically, sounding extremely disappointed. “You’re forgetting something, Sherlock.”

Sherlock turned to glare defiantly at the box, mentally noting the time they were at now. “I haven’t forgotten anything!”

“Yes, you have!” The man challenged in a strange sort of singsong voice. “You’re forgetting a very, big, detail. Do you want to try again?”

“Less than a minute and a half, Holmes,” Watson warned, as if Sherlock couldn’t read the time himself.

“What am I supposedly forgetting then?” Sherlock snapped irritably. It wasn’t like him to forget or not think of everything. He knew he was right.

“The banker, Sherlock. Our murdered banker with all that blood in the front seat of his rented car,” the man’s voice reminded in a hint of the same singsong.

“The frozen blood, that he donated before he disappeared,” Sherlock said to clarify. They’d already covered all of this earlier. “The abandoned car was obviously staged and the blood planted. Nothing happened to him in the car. The blood has no relevance.”

“Doesn’t it?” The man asked curiously. He obviously wanted Sherlock to second-guess himself.

"It was meant to lead everyone to believe he had been murdered in that car. Afterwards he would simply disappear, as if he was actually murdered." Sherlock explained, trying to solve this ridiculous puzzle. He never liked working against deadlines; the time constraint made things more difficult and less obvious. Even the deadlines for his novels he found difficult to meet.

"Only a minute, Holmes!" Watson warned, breaking his focus again.

"Yes, yes, I know!" Sherlock agreed, trying to silence him. He refocused on the box, hoping to get more information from the man. "So the banker isn't dead and he wasn't murdered. Where is he then?" 

Sherlock leaned in and questioned again, "You are absolutely sure the wife wasn't part of this scheme of his?"

"I am absolutely certain," the man snapped, sounding very annoyed Sherlock was questioning him. He sighed dramatically, “I thought you were cleverer than this, Sherlock. After all, I’ve read all your novels. And they were so much more complicated than this simple riddle of mine.”

“If it’s so simple than tell me the answer!” Sherlock shouted at the box, his temper finally fraying. He did like riddles, true, but not ones that defied logic and therefore had no logical answer. This man had already grown tiresome.

“That’s not the game, Sherlock.” The man insisted, voice rapidly rising. “What is your answer to my riddle?”

“I already gave my answer, you’re the one who won’t accept it because you believe it’s wrong.” Sherlock returned irritably, willingly arguing with the man. “So turn off the timer, stop your bomb, and finally give us our answers!”

“I told you the wife wasn’t behind the staging of her husband’s murder. She may have known he was dead, but she didn’t care. She had already moved on and had no motive for killing him.” The man declared irritably, deliberately drawing out each word as if Sherlock was a common idiot.

“That can’t be true. Of course the wife has a motive, they always do. Her husband wasn’t paying attention to her, they were having problems. So the husband decided to take the easiest option out and disappear.” Sherlock explained plainly; offering the most rational explanation even though he knew it was unlikely the man would accept it. “She caught on to his plan and killed him first.”

“Holmes, it’s not worth it,” Watson interrupted, turning to face him. “He’s not going to give us any answers. Not willingly anyway.” A hand wrapped around his arm, warm and fully drawing his attention. Sherlock tried not to pull away on instinct. “He’s not helping our investigation. So we’ll find answers somewhere else. And we’ll find another way to track him. Right now though it’s time to leave.”

“Not yet,” Sherlock disagreed, weakly tugging on his arm. “I will solve this!”

Watson shifted so he was standing in front of him, blocking Sherlock’s view of the box. “Yes right now. There obviously isn’t an answer, you’ve already said as much.” 

The detective leaned in until they close to each other. In a softer voice he continued, “There are only seconds left on that timer. We need to leave now, Holmes. We don’t want to be in the room if this bomb goes off.” His mouth twisted. “Live to fight another day.”

“But I can-” Sherlock started to protest, focusing on the detective instead of the bomb.

“You can, but you don’t have to. We’re not playing any more games with this man.” Watson glanced at the bomb, checking, and quickly looked back to Sherlock. “So let’s go.”

“Thinking about going somewhere, detective?” The man’s voice rung out icily, the same singsong note appearing again. This wasn’t a man to test idly. “Or how about you Sherlock, I thought we were having fun.”

“You aren’t following the rules correctly,” Sherlock barked at the box. But he didn’t look away from the detective. “You also aren’t giving us any answers we’re looking for and you said you would answer.”

“There are no rules, Sherlock.” The man snapped in return. “And neither of you are going anywhere.”

“Holmes, we’re running out of time.” Watson said insistently, starting to sound worried. He lightly tugged on Sherlock’s arm again. “We need to leave.”

Sherlock looked closely at the detective, noticing obvious distress and worry for both of them. Interesting. He didn’t look at the bomb; there was no need to anymore. If they weren’t going to get their answers, and the man was going to cheat, then Watson was right- there was no reason for them to stay here.

“All right,” Sherlock finally agreed, with a small nod. He let Watson lead him towards the doorway of the room, for once moving away from the danger and mystery.

But when they were only a step away, Sherlock stopped to turn back. Even given the situation he couldn’t resist one last taunt. “I do feel disappointed. After your letters and promises of riddles I expected more. But in reality you’re just boring.”

“Sherlock!”

That was Watson, why had he-? Sherlock looked sideways to the detective. He took in the man’s incredulous look and realized, “Oh. Not good?”

Watson blinked and after a long second chuckled, “Bit not, no.” 

His eyes darted back to the bomb, checking again.

“I. Am. Not. Boring!” The man’s voice shouted furiously, the words echoing.

It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and Sherlock suddenly realized just how much real and possibly fatal danger he had put Watson in by coming along to investigate the strange letters. They had come inside the building not expecting to find anything. But instead they had found the madman who had written the letters and was determined to play games with them. Other times he may have enjoyed this, but not when it put Watson’s life at stake at the same time.

“Let’s go,” he said, now being the insistent one. Sherlock wanted to leave now and they were nearly out of time.

The detective’s gaze was still on the bomb, where Sherlock didn’t dare look. Watson didn’t reply right away, instead it was a few precious seconds before he said quietly, “This is too easy.”

What? “There’s a bomb currently counting down the mere seconds we have left. We may not survive at this point even if we leave now,” Sherlock reminded just to help make his point. “And you’re saying this is too easy?”

“He wouldn’t just kill us, he laid out a trail for us to follow to bring us here,” Watson insisted, still speaking in a low voice. Sherlock belatedly noticed that the detective’s hand was still on his arm.

“Are you willing to take that risk?” Sherlock hissed in the same quiet voice. “I don’t believe I am.” He didn’t exactly go into his reasons why.

“Bor-ing!” The man’s voice rang out. “Let’s make this a little more interesting, shall we?”

Sherlock and Watson both rapidly turned to look at the countdown on the bomb, which was now slowly ticking down into the single digits.

“Nine!”

No, no, no.

“Eight!”

“Come on!” Sherlock grabbed Watson’s- John’s- arm and pulled him forward. John stumbled a little at first but then quickly found his feet. 

“Seven!”

He was right next to Sherlock as they burst through the doorway and quickly turned towards the door leading out into the hallway.

“Six!”

“Faster!” John commanded, taking the lead and pulling Sherlock along now barely a step ahead.

The two of them ran across the room, the man’s voice counting down the seconds behind them.

“Five!”

They were nearly to the hallway, and he was very grateful the building was abandoned so there weren’t any obstacles in their path. It was also a great relief John was easily keeping up with him.

“Four!”

Together they stepped through the doorway and out into the hallway. Sherlock paused; looking up and down the hallway to decide which direction gave them a better chance of survival.

“Three!”

John didn’t hesitate at all. He gripped Sherlock’s arm even tighter and directed him left, down the hall towards the stairs.

Behind them the call of “Two!” followed them, almost a taunt.

“Come on!” John demanded tugging him forward along the hallway, getting even further away from the bomb.

Sherlock did his best to stay beside John, but he wasn’t used to running for his life.

“One! Goodbye Sherlock dear,” the man’s voice called, sounding oddly cheerful. “We could have had such fun together!”

A deafeningly loud explosion erupted behind them, shaking the floor beneath their feet. 

Sherlock stopped, with the intention to turn around and look. But he only briefly saw the door of the room crash outward before John grabbed both of his arms and pulled him down to the floor. 

Sherlock landed ungracefully on his knees, his back to the way they’d come. John’s face filled his vision, pale and worried. Then Sherlock’s head was forced down and he could feel John’s arm weighing down his back.

The floor of the hallway still shook from smaller explosions caused by the after-effects of the bomb. He could hear debris raining down behind them. John was pressed against him, covering him- or trying to- from the destruction.

They stayed that way for what felt like a long time, breathing heavily while trying to stay very still. Finally the explosions and shaking stopped, leaving heavy silence behind in its wake.

Sherlock fought to get air in his lungs and breathe normally, trying to slow his racing heartbeat. By the time his body was nearly under control again, John took a last deep breath before slowly removing the weight from Sherlock’s back and sitting upright.

Sherlock cautiously did the same, sitting next to John on the dust and debris covered floor of the hallway. They sat there for a few seconds before he heard John take a deep, shaky breath. 

Sherlock turned his head to look at John and their eyes met. Suddenly, with no explanation, Sherlock felt laughter building in his chest. He couldn’t help himself, it had to escape. A chuckle bubbled out and then there was no way to stop laughing and laughing because all of a sudden everything they’d just went through seemed completely ridiculous.

Beside him John snorted indignantly and tried to duck his head as he started to giggle as well, which set Sherlock off all over again.

Sherlock was still chuckling when John caught his breath enough to scold in between gulps of air, “Stop-stop! We can’t-laugh!”

“You stop then!” Sherlock insisted, looking again at the other man. His eyes fell on the splintered door half-barricading the hallway and the new debris and wall plaster covering the floor. “Maybe I shouldn’t have taunted him,” Sherlock commented, without feeling any real regret.

John sniggered. “Maybe not.”

Sherlock took a deep breath, their shared sudden fit of laughter trailing off. 

The detective met Sherlock’s eyes again, putting on a professional demeanor as he said, “I suppose I should call Sally and Clara and have them come around. The crime scene investigators, bomb squad, and paramedics wouldn’t hurt either.”

Sherlock frowned, “But the bomb has already gone off, and both of us are fine. Besides, if we were injured, you’re more than qualified to check us over.” He felt himself smile. “More than any paramedics might be. Doctor Watson.”

John flashed a grin at him, shifting on the floor to pull his phone from his pocket.

Sherlock watched as the detective unlocked it and checked the screen. It seemed whatever device had blocked the signal earlier was gone now.

John suddenly looked up at him and asked, “Haven’t you heard? Doctor’s make the worst patients.”

Sherlock laughed; he wasn’t a very good patient either.

John tapped the screen to call someone, and raised the phone to his ear.

As he did Sherlock sighed and leaned back against the wall, clasping his fingers on top of his leg. He wondered how long they would be unnecessarily delayed here.

A few seconds later Sherlock stirred when his own phone chimed in his pocket. He shifted against the wall and pulled out his phone.

He expected the new messages to be from his brother. Doubtless Mycroft had found out where they’d gone, somehow gotten his eyes on this building, and was watching them. When the explosion had happened Mycroft had doubtless gone into a snit worrying about him and was now checking up on him. As he always did.

Sherlock raised the phone to his eyes and pressed a key to light up the screen. But instead of a new message from Mycroft, there were two from Ellie.

He felt his heart skip a beat. Sherlock unlocked the screen and looked at the messages that appeared.

The first had come in barely a minute ago. The message read. ‘Uncle Myc called me. Are you okay? He said something happened but didn’t tell me what. He just wanted to know where you were.’

Sherlock sighed noisily in exasperation. Of course his brother wouldn’t simply contact him to see what had happened. He had to involve Ellie and make her worried.

The second message was from just seconds earlier. It said, ‘Dad, please tell me what’s going on. Are you okay? Uncle Myc sounded worried.’

Sherlock tapped on the screen to open a reply. He paused for a second to consider his answer before carefully typing out, ‘I am fine. You don’t have to worry. Your uncle is just being nosy. I’ll see you later.’

He was about to lock his phone again when a new message came in. ‘That doesn’t make it better. Be safe.’

‘You too.’ Sherlock replied, and locked his phone to slide it back into his pocket. He debated whether or not to text Mycroft to tell him to stop butting in, but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth conversing with his brother.

~~


	5. Chapter 5

After John and Holmes left to track down the exciting lead of the creepy over the top fan letters, Sally and Clara had relocated to the smaller conference room Clara and John had been using. 

They’d settled in on either side of the table, spread out their respective stacks of letters and files, locked the door, turned on their favorite music playlist, and got to work.

Sally finished reading over the fan letters again and reached across the table to pull one of the stacks of files over to her side. She managed to keep it upright without any of the files or papers falling then took the top one for herself.

Clara was tapping her foot against the chair along to the music, sitting cross-legged with her latest file spread out on her lap.

The playlist was switching over to the next song when the desk phone in the middle of the table started ringing, the red light on the top flashing.

Sally and Clara both jerked their heads up, looking at each other. The phone rang two more times before they both sprang into action, reaching across the table for the phone.

Clara’s hand touched the phone first. She closed her hand around it and picked it up, shooting Sally a triumphant smirk.

“Detective Cohen, what’s the news?” She greeted, fighting a grin when Sally rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to her file.

“It’s John, Clara,” John’s voice greeted her from the other end of the line.

“John!” Clara exclaimed, sitting back in her chair. She just barely caught the file she’d been reading before it fell and tossed it on the table. 

Clara snapped at Sally to get her attention, even though she knew Sally hated it. “How are you? Where are you?”

“Use the speaker!” Sally hissed, springing up from the chair and hurrying around the table to stand beside Clara.

“Hang on a minute, John,” Clara instructed before setting the handset back on its base and pressing the speakerphone button. “Okay, now we can talk. Sally’s here too.”

John’s laugh crackled over the speaker. “Hello, Clara and Sally. How is the investigation going?”

“We have found,” Clara started to say before pausing dramatically. Finally she finished, “Absolutely nothing.”

“What excellent investigators you are,” Holmes’ voice commented, sounding far away and somehow muffled.

Clara and Sally turned to look at each other in confusion when they heard John laugh and scold, almost teasing, “Did I say you could talk? Just keep walking, we need to get out of here.”

“I am walking. And I can still hear your conversation while doing so,” Holmes responded, sounding closer now. Possibly next to John.

“God you are insufferable,” John said in a soft enough voice it had probably been meant for his own ears. But instead of sounding irritated, now he sounded more… amused. 

Just what had happened with them? Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to send them off on their own.

“John, are you alright? Are you both alright?” Sally inquired sharply, leaning over the arm of Clara’s chair.

“We’re fine,” John quickly reassured, sounding very calm. “But some backup would be nice.”

Clara rapidly sat up in her in chair and leaned over the edge of the table. “How can you be fine but also need backup? Are you two in danger?”

“We are perfectly fine, detective,” Holmes’ voice called on a sigh. “I would hope you’d be able to tell if we were in danger.”

“Don’t you dare take that off, Sherlock,” John snapped in a warning. “I’m watching you.”

“John-” Sally started to say, but was interrupted before she could say more.

“I don’t know why you gave me your coat, I don’t need it.” They overheard Holmes protest irritably, just before the sound of a door opening. “I already have my own. And it’s much nicer.”

“Yes, I know,” John replied in his typical calm yet sarcastic-edged reassurance. “But you could be in shock.”

As annoyed as she was that John hadn’t explained exactly what was happening where they were, or if they were in fact fine, Clara was fighting back sniggers at the sound of the two of them doing what could only be called bantering. In any other situation it would sound like they were old friends.

Beside her Sally sighed and said insistently, “John. Are you two all right? Are you safe?”

“What do you need?” Clara added, leaning closer alongside Sally.

“Well, CSU would be helpful.” John replied over the noise of a door closing again. “And the bomb squad, and paramedics just to be safe.”

“‘Bomb squad’?”

“‘Paramedics’?”

“Just to be safe!” John repeated over their simultaneous protests. “We aren’t hurt or in danger. At least not any more.”

“John!” Sally and Clara shouted disapprovingly at the same time. (They didn’t practice at all).

“Do you make a habit of frequently doing things that make your detectives worry about you so much?” Holmes contributed, sounding too curious and innocent.

“No, I do not,” John replied firmly. He sighed then said directly into the phone, “Just come meet us. And bring those teams with you, we’ll make it a social event.”

“An event?” Sally echoed, glancing at Clara with a very disbelieving look.

“Just come, Sally, Clara,” John requested quietly, and they knew he was being serious. “This might be important, there might still be clues to find here.”

“There are always clues,” Holmes commented.

John sighed but didn’t rise to the bait this time. “We really are fine. I promise. We just need some outside help.”

Sally and Clara shared a look before both jumping into action. “We’ll be there in twenty,” Sally promised.

She ended the call while Clara switched off the music. Then they rushed together for the door.

~~~

It took less than twenty minutes to get to the building, even with traffic on their side.

By the time Clara pulled the car over outside the building John had told her they were at (and thank goodness for GPS with how unreliable his directions could be), the recognizable cars of the CSU team and the paramedic van were already gathered on the other side of the street.

Clara quickly turned off the car and they both climbed out. Once they’d walked around the other cars the front entrance of the building came into view, where John and Holmes were sitting together on the top steps chatting amiably as if they weren’t sitting outside a crime scene.

Sally actually paused, staring at John and Holmes. Then she shook her head and muttered under her breath, “Honestly.”

Clara laughed. She definitely couldn’t have expected this. “Cone on. Let’s go get our boys in line,” Clara suggested, patting her friend on the shoulder.

Sally turned her head to give Clara a smile. “They’re lucky we aren’t the ones in charge.”

“Yet,” Clara corrected quickly with a wink.

They continued walking towards the front of the building. Even though the whole team hadn’t arrived yet, there were still people wandering around already.

When they were close to the front steps John tore his attention away from Holmes to greet them with a bright smile. A little too bright, which meant John probably knew he was in trouble.

“What were you thinking?” Sally demanded, stopping at the bottom of the steps. She stood staring down at him with her hands on her hips. “I thought you said this was just tracking down a lead that probably wouldn’t give us anything new.”

John sat up straighter and held his hands out, appeasing. “It was supposed to be! But then the building was completely abandoned and empty. Except for the room with the bomb. And the man-”

“So there was a bomb?” Clara jumped in, starting to feel just as incredulous as Sally looked. “And you actually stayed in that room?”

“That was my fault,” Holmes offered quickly before John could dig himself a deeper hole. 

“The man who spoke to us gave me riddles to solve with time limits for each. I was under the, apparently mistaken, impression that when I solved them he would give John every answer he wanted.” Holmes’ mouth twisted in annoyance, and Clara noticed his gaze glance to John for a brief moment. “Instead we were forced to run for our lives before the bomb exploded.”

Clara felt her anger quickly dying down to change instead to relief that they’d both survived. Beside her she noticed Sally’s tense posture relax as well.

In front of them John turned to face Holmes again and reassured comfortingly, “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known he would have a bomb and wouldn’t follow up on his promises.”

“I should have!” Holmes burst out roughly, looking furious with himself. “Men like that never play by the rules. Once we saw the bomb we should have left immediately.”

“Wait, hold on,” Sally commanded before the two idiotic men could continue exchanging apologies for probably forever. She slid a hand into the jacket pocket where she habitually kept her notepad and pen. But they weren’t there.

Wordlessly Clara took out her own notepad and matching pen and handed it over to her teammate.

Once Sally uncapped the pen and flipped to a new page in the notepad, Clara instructed, “Now start all the way back at the beginning. And don’t leave out anything.”

Holmes and John exchanged a long glance before they turned to Sally and Clara and started explaining.

John, being the trained detective, tried to tell what happened in the same way he’d written numerous case reports. Plain, simple, only the facts, and tried to include every single detail.

Holmes, crime novelist and apparently slightly dramatic, continuously spoke over John and interrupted to add his own impressions. He told the story more like the narrative of a story, full of description, speeches, and suspenseful pauses as he watched their reactions carefully.

A few times they interrupted their own explanations to argue over details with each other, or for Holmes to insult the nature of the riddles he’d be given and insist he knew he’d been right.

In the end it was more like trying to get two different statements at exactly the same time; while listening, clarifying, and taking notes all at once. When John and Holmes were finally finished Sally had page after page of notes in her notepad. 

They made the decision to have the bomb squad search the entire building first before anyone else went inside. A necessary safety precaution. The bomb team was in there now, with the CSU team standing by waiting with all their tools and impatient looks. The paramedics were waiting still just beyond the parked cars.

Once John and Holmes stopped talking Sally snapped the notepad closed and tapped the cover with the pen.

“All right. John, I know you said you’re both okay but you did also request we call the paramedics.” Sally said, taking charge. She handed the notepad back over to Clara. “So just go and get checked out. Please.”

At Holmes’ bristling and annoyed expression Clara added, just as firmly, “Both of you. And no running off or avoiding them instead. I’ll go ask if I have to.”

That at least teased a smile out of John. He rolled his shoulders and stood up. “Fair enough,” he agreed with a slight nod. “But let me know what the bomb squad and CSU folks find.”

Holmes followed suit, getting to his feet much more reluctantly next to John. He raised a hand to pull John’s jacket off his shoulders when a high-pitched chime made him freeze.

Apparently John really had given Holmes his jacket. That was kind of him; even if Holmes wasn’t injured or in shock like John had said earlier. 

They did seem to be getting along really well suddenly. Maybe facing a bomb did that. Of course Clara wouldn’t know because she wasn’t idiotic and reckless enough to do something like that.

Holmes had taken his phone from his pocket and was now scowling down at the screen.

The phone chimed two more times in quick succession, high pitched and insistent. The first made Holmes’ expression darken even further and at the second a low curse escaped his lips. With a swipe of his thumb he unlocked the screen and then began hammering out a reply pressing furiously down on the keys.

John leaned over slightly, trying to see what was on the screen. In response Holmes raised the phone higher so John had no chance of seeing it, continuing to quickly tap out message after message.

“Everything all right?” John asked, catching his coat as it fell off Holmes’ shoulders. He pulled it on one arm at a time and sighed when Holmes didn’t answer. “Sherlock,” John called sharply. “Is everything alright?”

“Fine,” Holmes bit out, tearing his eyes away to glare at something or someone down the street. 

Clara turned to look, but only saw a black car parked down the street on the other side beyond the police tape. What had gotten him so upset? She indulged in calculating the chances of being able to get the phone away from him to look at the messages.

With a flourish Holmes finished typing his latest message and jammed his phone back into his pocket. He looked around first at John, and then to Clara and Sally, before saying as if everything were perfectly fine, “I’ll go see the paramedics now, since everyone seems to insist on it.” 

Then he turned and started walking determinedly towards the paramedic vehicle. The two paramedics who had been waiting quickly leapt to their feet when they saw him coming. They gathered around Holmes and shepherded him over to sit on the back of the truck.

After a few seconds of silence Sally suddenly declared, turning to look at John, “You two are never allowed to go off on your own again.”

John for his part looked bewildered at this proclamation. When he turned to Clara, probably expecting her to take his side, she shook her head. “From here on any legwork involved with this case one of us will follow up on. You’re confined to the precinct.”

“Who’s the senior officer and the one in charge here?” John protested, but there wasn’t any bite to his words. He knew they were right, even if technically yes, he was their senior.

“You can’t always jump in and risk your life, John. I thought you’d realized that,” Clara admonished. She knew he enjoyed being a detective, thrived in the job, but sometimes he could be so reckless. It wasn’t worth his life even if he usually didn’t go that far. “You need to be more careful. Especially with Holmes working on this case with us. That probably means even more eyes are watching us.”

“That’s probably true, but we were being careful. We’re both fine,” John insisted lowly, waving a hand at himself and then gesturing over to Holmes who was currently sitting on the back of the truck with a large orange blanket draped over him. Clara absently wondered if there was an actual medical purpose for the blanket.

“John, Lestrade warned us to keep an eye on both of you,” Sally disclosed quietly looking at John. Clara stared at her in surprise, because while that was true Lestrade had also sworn them not to tell. “He also mentioned that once the public and press hears about the case we’ll be under a lot of scrutiny. So it’s better to start being careful now.”

“I know that, Sally. I’ve been a detective long enough to know how to conduct myself on high profile cases,” John answered, giving off the tell tale signs he was starting to get defensive. “You two don’t need to worry. And tell Greg not to either. We’ll be fine.”

Before either Clara or Sally could explain that they were really just looking out for him, Holmes called from his perch on the paramedic truck, “John!”

Without hesitating John turned to look over at Holmes, who once he noticed John looking beckoned him over with a wave of his hand. “I’ll be right back,” John said to Clara and Sally before he quickly walked over to Holmes.

Sally watched him go before shaking her head and telling Clara, “Those two will be the death of us.”

“They’re not so bad. Maybe they’ll be good for each other,” Clara replied optimistically, watching as John stopped next to Holmes and started apparently questioning the paramedic who was checking over Holmes. Holmes sat with the bright orange blanket still wrapped around his shoulders, looking annoyed about being ignored.

“Mmm,” Sally said skeptically and walked away to converse with one of the members of the bomb squad who had just left the building.

Clara watched John and Holmes for another minute before turning and following after Sally, not wanting to miss the update on what- if anything- the bomb squad had found inside.

~

Some time later after the bomb squad gave them the all clear, Clara and Sally were supervising the CSU team as they methodically searched the building for evidence and took pictures of everything. They were standing on the landing between the first two floors of the building, looking upward at the second floor, when Clara’s phone buzzed in her pocket.

She quickly dug it out, hoping it was an update from John. The new text was from John, but it wasn’t what she expected.

From: John W

Paramedics gave us both a clean bill of health, so stop worrying. They even let Sherlock keep the orange blanket! Taking him home to make sure he’s all right. We won’t go in any abandoned buildings on the way, promise. 

Keep me in the loop if CSU finds anything interesting. Otherwise I’ll see you two back at the precinct after you finish there.

Clara sighed, feeling a strange mixture of worried and amused. “Maybe they will make each other even worse,” she mused. 

She showed the text to Sally, who gave her a knowing look. “Told you.”

Clara laughed; bumping shoulders with Sally, and followed her up the stairs towards the second floor of the building where it seemed all the action was.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments are welcome! :)


End file.
